eCommerce Townhall Ep1: Conversion Rate Optimization for E-commerce Businesses with Shekhar Kapoor of ConvertCart

0:00 – hey guys on today’s episode i’ve got
0:02 – Shekhar
0:03 – Kapoor who is vp of marketing at
0:06 – convertcart.com
0:07 – ConvertCart has a really really
0:09 – powerful approach uh to conversion
0:11 – optimization
0:12 – uh where obviously they run tests like
0:14 – you normally would with cro
0:16 – but they also have a full technology
0:18 – backend that really enables them
0:20 – to iterate tests really quickly and to
0:23 – scale
0:23 – what works really quickly so at the end
0:25 – of the day you can test faster test
0:27 – better
0:28 – and ultimately improve results what
0:30 – we’re going to dig into with Shekhar on
0:31 – this episode is some of the unique
0:33 – perspectives that he has
0:34 – from seeing thousands of ecom cro tests
0:37 – so we’re not going to talk about the
0:38 – typical stuff you normally see
0:39 – in a blog post of you know five tips to
0:41 – improve conversions we’re going to be
0:43 – getting into the nitty-gritty on a few
0:44 – specific tactics that you can use
0:46 – to improve conversions on your store so
0:48 – you don’t want to miss this one
0:50 – dig in and i’m looking forward to seeing
0:51 – what you implement welcome to e-commerce
0:54 – town hall
0:54 – where six seven and eight figure
0:56 – e-commerce store leaders
0:58 – learn how to scale and streamline to get
1:00 – to the next level
1:02 – on each episode you’ll see strategies
1:04 – from the industry experts behind
1:05 – successful stores
1:07 – that you can take back and apply with
1:09 – your teams right away
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1:28 – now let’s dive into today’s episode
1:31 – hey guys welcome to e-commerce town hall
1:34 – super excited to dig into today’s topic
1:36 – today i’ve got Shekhar Kapoor he’s vp
1:39 – marketing at convertcart.com
1:41 – uh ConvertCart has help 500 stores over
1:44 – 500 stores
1:45 – increase conversions by as much as 30 or
1:47 – more so they really
1:48 – they really understand their stuff um
1:50 – when it comes to cro and
1:51 – we worked with them on a number of
1:53 – clients uh and so
1:55 – you know it’s really a hot topic in
1:58 – e-commerce there’s a lot of
1:59 – resources you can look at and a lot of
2:01 – best practices there’s a lot of coaches
2:03 – there’s a lot of people out there
2:05 – but it’s uh it’s hard especially with
2:07 – stores in our audience at six and seven
2:09 – figures and above like these are not new
2:10 – stores
2:11 – it’s hard to get things in place that
2:13 – are going to
2:14 – really move the needle when you’re at
2:16 – that scale and so that’s really what we
2:17 – want to dig into
2:18 – with Shekhar today um and so we’re gonna
2:20 – look at a couple different angles
2:22 – um but the takeaway i want you guys to
2:23 – get is um you know really
2:25 – methodical ways for stores to increase
2:27 – conversions um
2:29 – and do it the way that you know
2:30 – sophisticated cro guys do so
2:33 – shakar super excited to have you um
2:35 – welcome to the show i appreciate you
2:36 – taking the time
2:38 – um before we dig into the nitty-gritty
2:40 – of everything
2:41 – give me a little bit of your background
2:42 – kind of paint a picture i know your
2:43 – background but um give give some context
2:45 – to everybody listening
2:47 – thanks a lot Jon it’s great to be here
2:48 – thanks for having me
2:50 – and uh as far as i go i i’ve i’ve i
2:53 – personally
2:54 – was in the marketing and sales
2:55 – consulting business for
2:57 – about more than seven years um after
3:00 – having worked
3:00 – you know full time for a bunch of b2b
3:02 – b2c companies
3:04 – um you know on sales and marketing and
3:06 – um
3:08 – you know when i came across ConvertCart
3:11 – i was to be honest with you blown away
3:13 – with the way we were doing conversion
3:14 – optimization
3:16 – i hadn’t looked at conversion
3:17 – optimization as seriously as i do now
3:20 – before but i was interested to convert
3:22 – and um
3:23 – and that’s really where um you know i
3:26 – saw the potential
3:27 – um so if you really see what what truly
3:31 – matters
3:31 – in the way my uh you know uh
3:34 – you know horizon to conversion
3:36 – optimization has opened up up is
3:38 – uh you said 500 stores that we work with
3:40 – right now uh
3:41 – we run an average of one to two
3:43 – experiments a month for them
3:45 – you know on an ongoing basis so we’re
3:47 – talking about roughly 6000 experiments
3:49 – we’re running every year
3:50 – and um i of course look the sales and
3:53 – mark overlook the sales and marketing
3:54 – um you know divisions here um
3:58 – and i personally have spoken to at least
4:00 – 1 000 e-commerce entrepreneurs uh that’s
4:02 – that’s
4:02 – what i could keep a tab on to be honest
4:04 – with you uh over the last um
4:07 – four years um so yeah it’s been it’s
4:09 – been a ride
4:10 – nice i’m curious you know what are some
4:13 – of the big
4:14 – things that stand out as you talk to all
4:15 – these ecom guys and girls to really
4:17 – understand like
4:18 – what are some misconceptions around cro
4:20 – or when somebody comes to you especially
4:22 – with an
4:22 – uh an established store like the
4:24 – majority of our audience six and seven
4:25 – figures some eight so like they’re not
4:27 – you know starting from scratch
4:28 – but even then you know i noticed they
4:30 – have misconceptions like what are some
4:31 – of the things that you’ve seen
4:33 – in those conversations um that you’re
4:35 – able to kind of unlock a different
4:36 – perspective in uh in these guys
4:40 – so for all the companies and the
4:42 – businesses that i’ve spoken with or
4:43 – individuals that i’ve spoken with
4:45 – i i would largely put them in three
4:47 – different buckets so there are
4:48 – businesses or business owners that are
4:50 – largely
4:51 – completely uh unaware about conversion
4:53 – and optimization they don’t know the
4:55 – benefits
4:55 – of optimization they they’ve not tried
4:57 – it they know their experience probably
5:00 – needs to be better but they’re not
5:01 – taking a
5:02 – you know serious shot at it so i call
5:03 – them um
5:05 – you know there’s no better way to put it
5:06 – but illiterate entrepreneurs right
5:07 – they’re not lifted about conversion
5:09 – optimization then there are people who
5:10 – are
5:10 – who are trying so they’re using some you
5:12 – know minor tools
5:14 – but they’re not successful of course
5:15 – because they’re not really
5:17 – doing full-blown optimization they’re
5:19 – not using complex solutions to solve
5:21 – problems like product discovery or trust
5:24 – so on and so forth
5:25 – and then the third one is people who are
5:27 – aware that they truly need to solve this
5:29 – problem
5:29 – they are trying solutions one after the
5:31 – other uh and they’re not successful so
5:33 – largely what i’ve seen is about 98
5:36 – 99 of the people that i’ve met um
5:39 – uh they’re not successful with
5:41 – optimization and and the primary reason
5:43 – for that is because
5:44 – it’s a complex process of of you know
5:47 – analyzing data and finding a problem
5:49 – coming up with the right solution for
5:50 – those problems on the side so for
5:52 – example
5:52 – you know you may analyze data and find
5:55 – that
5:56 – product discovery is really difficult on
5:57 – the site right people are just hoving
5:58 – from one page to another
6:00 – and the journey is just broken and you
6:02 – want to fix that problem
6:05 – you’ll probably go sign up to the
6:06 – product discovery solution uh you know
6:08 – maybe improve your search maybe work on
6:10 – navigation but then your ability to do
6:14 – that is going to depend on
6:15 – the ability of either the tools that you
6:17 – use or the teams that you hire
6:20 – there’s definitely nothing that’s that
6:21 – that’s sort of a you know all-in-one
6:24 – setting out there and that’s the reason
6:27 – if you really see if you look at the
6:28 – metrics for some of the most major sas
6:32 – tools that are available out there that
6:34 – are in the conversion at optimization or
6:36 – the a b testing
6:36 – space they see a 30 to 40 churn rate on
6:40 – an annual basis
6:41 – right so their customers leave them on
6:43 – an ongoing basis because it’s
6:44 – incredibly hard to see success when you
6:47 – use these third-party solutions
6:49 – so in variable that’s one common sort of
6:51 – pattern that i’ve seen they you know so
6:52 – there are people who don’t know they
6:53 – should be working on optimization
6:55 – and people who know and they’re working
6:56 – on optimization but neither of them is
6:58 – really successful and
7:00 – that’s purely because you know people
7:02 – don’t fully understand
7:03 – how tough it could be to you know
7:05 – basically optimize uh conversions and to
7:07 – work on their sites experience
7:09 – audit got it there’s so much we could
7:11 – dig into and i know um there’s gonna be
7:13 – like probably four or five like major
7:14 – areas we’ll dig into kind of like we
7:16 – were chatting about before
7:17 – um but i want to spend a couple minutes
7:19 – on on what you just said
7:22 – and the question is really what is at a
7:25 – high level the right way
7:27 – for a brand to do cro and that doesn’t
7:29 – mean like how to do everything but
7:31 – you mentioned you know a testing process
7:33 – you mentioned one to two experiments a
7:35 – month there’s i’m sure there’s a way you
7:36 – prioritize those and structure those
7:38 – you mentioned you know there’s different
7:39 – tools out there that do different things
7:41 – like
7:42 – what’s the framework at a high level of
7:44 – how to properly run
7:45 – cro for an established brand so
7:49 – the first place you would want to start
7:51 – is is
7:52 – with data so i you wouldn’t be surprised
7:55 – that i i we often meet
7:57 – businesses that are doing you know um
8:00 – you know upper seven figures in revenue
8:02 – and uh
8:03 – and they’re still not great in the way
8:05 – they track data using even google
8:06 – analytics or otherwise so that’s the
8:08 – first place to start
8:09 – you have to have airtight visibility on
8:12 – absolutely each and every
8:13 – event that happens on your site now
8:14 – whether you’re using third-party tools
8:16 – to do that or using an analytics
8:18 – google analytics that is or something
8:20 – else it’s up to you you could hire an
8:22 – expert off of
8:24 – any freelancer site and just set it up
8:26 – properly uh that’s super important
8:27 – because the more data you have and as
8:29 – you collect data over time the more
8:31 – clarity you will have on who your
8:32 – customer is
8:33 – why they’re your customer and then you
8:35 – can extrapolate that back
8:37 – into you know how can you get more of
8:38 – that kind of people so
8:40 – that’s the first place to start the
8:41 – second thing is to have a serious
8:43 – analyst or you know sit down and analyze
8:45 – how your funnel looks just look at your
8:46 – most fundamental funnel right so look at
8:48 – where traffic enters the site
8:50 – uh look at you know what are the
8:52 – channels that are bringing you the most
8:53 – amount of money
8:54 – and what is the journey that people take
8:57 – you know on your site
8:58 – to finally you know put that cash in
9:00 – your pocket or finally buy that those
9:02 – products from you
9:03 – what are the questions that they have in
9:04 – mind right so once you’ve
9:06 – really decoded what is it that works
9:09 – you will instantly start to get clarity
9:11 – on what is it that’s not working
9:12 – because you know you would you would see
9:14 – where the journeys are failing you know
9:15 – what
9:16 – where are people falling off you know
9:17 – why are they falling off what are they
9:19 – not interacting with and so on and so
9:20 – forth
9:21 – that will immediately then of course
9:22 – point at what solutions could possibly
9:24 – solve those problems
9:26 – um one of the other interesting things
9:27 – is you know you have to have a handle on
9:30 – behavior
9:31 – you have to have a handle on um you know
9:33 – just fundamental stuff like trust
9:35 – you know clarity of value proposition is
9:37 – there friction on the side
9:39 – right is there something that’s too
9:40 – confusing because um
9:42 – you know there’s an interesting way to
9:43 – put it up as entrepreneurs
9:46 – um and you know i have a friend of you
9:49 – know rishi he runs this company called
9:50 – frictionless commerce so
9:52 – he’s he’s a guru for product page
9:54 – optimization you know
9:55 – he he he does copy like in the god mode
9:59 – but
9:59 – he says you know entrepreneurs are
10:00 – likely to be um you know too close to
10:03 – the problem
10:04 – so they will probably never look at
10:05 – their own side and truly be able to
10:07 – scrutinize it
10:08 – that’s also why we do free audits for
10:10 – sites where we say you know what let us
10:12 – find the problem on your site
10:13 – you can walk away with the problem if
10:14 – you want don’t work with us but let us
10:16 – at least find out for you
10:17 – so once you’ve once you’ve really uh you
10:20 – know scrutinized the
10:21 – the site and found the right problems
10:23 – and and now that’s when you’re chasing
10:24 – the right solution so i think
10:26 – 70 of the success depends on finding the
10:28 – right problem
10:29 – the remaining 30 is just plain execution
10:31 – right getting the right designer
10:32 – designing something
10:33 – going and running the optimization um
10:36 – you could use an a b testing tool
10:37 – or if the problem is super
10:38 – straightforward and you know it’s it’s a
10:40 – hole you would want to plug
10:42 – you could just run that implementation
10:44 – so for example if you want to fix your
10:45 – search
10:46 – uh you’ll just probably sign up with a
10:48 – search solution or hire a developer to
10:50 – fix your search
10:51 – uh just get it done and you will
10:53 – instantly start to see a lift
10:54 – um but as i said 70 of the effort is
10:56 – just finding the problem
10:57 – the remaining 30 is purely just you know
11:00 – nailing it down
11:01 – with the solution interesting one of my
11:03 – takeaways from that is is really um
11:05 – even if you’re not laser focused on
11:08 – increasing conversions right now and
11:09 – like that’s not your goal this quarter
11:11 – is like to get a proper testing routine
11:13 – in place make sure the data is
11:14 – collecting
11:15 – right um like make sure you got your
11:17 – ecommerce data and analytics like we
11:19 – still see that happen with brands that
11:20 – um
11:21 – especially heavy facebook driven brands
11:23 – where they’ve scaled the whole thing on
11:24 – facebook ads
11:26 – the pixel is set up well and the
11:27 – facebook ads account tracks revenue and
11:29 – like they run everything in there
11:30 – but they don’t have like e-commerce
11:32 – tracking set up in uh in analytics right
11:34 – which is a huge missed opportunity when
11:36 – you want to
11:36 – retroactively go back so just having
11:39 – that stuff in place is key
11:40 – um and then that gives you that baseline
11:42 – really to move forward with
11:44 – um i want to switch gears and talk
11:47 – through
11:47 – like what are um you know some of the
11:50 – biggest ways
11:51 – um that you’ve seen to to improve
11:54 – conversions like what’s the low hanging
11:55 – fruit what are the big opportunities
11:57 – that you see i know we talked about
11:59 – you know search and site navigation and
12:01 – all those things like
12:02 – let’s kind of dig into some of that um
12:04 – you know search i think was the first
12:06 – big one that we talked about product
12:07 – discovery getting that right
12:09 – um what are what are some of the
12:10 – mistakes you see stores make or
12:13 – you know missed opportunities when it
12:14 – comes to search let’s dig into that
12:17 – sure i think it’s a massive area to be
12:19 – honest um
12:21 – you to first understand that search is
12:23 – incredibly fundamental to e-commerce
12:25 – today
12:26 – okay uh and that’s not because
12:29 – that’s not for us to debate to be honest
12:31 – with you that’s not because
12:32 – hey you know what you’re selling
12:33 – something that people will probably want
12:34 – to search for when they come on and say
12:36 – no that’s not the logic the logic is
12:37 – that’s what
12:38 – people inherently behave like people
12:41 – inherently
12:41 – are i mean they search everywhere in our
12:44 – lives right so that’s that’s practically
12:46 – what i mean
12:47 – if i’m cooking and and the temperature
12:50 – of the pan is not too
12:51 – not too accurate i’ll probably go google
12:53 – first you know before even
12:54 – you know giving it a shot so what’s
12:56 – really happening is
12:58 – people are using search incredibly
13:00 – aggressively across the board amazon is
13:02 – actually more than 55
13:03 – of the total product searches that
13:05 – happen in the world today so amazon has
13:07 – actually surpassed google
13:08 – um you know in terms of the number of
13:10 – products that are being searched online
13:12 – what that truly means is that people use
13:15 – search
13:16 – beyond what uh it’s meant for so you
13:19 – know search on a shopify site
13:20 – is to is meant for people to find
13:23 – products
13:24 – that are on that site right that’s what
13:25 – it’s meant for but people are going to
13:27 – type in stuff that is probably not going
13:29 – to be that
13:30 – um they’re going to be they’re going to
13:31 – be typing in their favorite colors
13:33 – they’re going to be typing in you know
13:34 – what they think your product
13:36 – looks or sounds like or feels like and
13:38 – then you’ve got to be able to serve
13:40 – amazing results to them so that they
13:41 – convert
13:42 – so search is probably the most you know
13:44 – the human to technology connection there
13:46 – is next level and you’ve got to crack
13:47 – that
13:48 – and you’ve got to work on it very
13:49 – consciously so i look at search as a
13:52 – funnel
13:52 – you have to have so the first thing is
13:55 – you know what percentage of your site
13:57 – visitors you search you look at that
13:59 – data first right
14:00 – um there’s one thing that i can tell you
14:02 – right out of the back that people that
14:04 – use a search bar on a site
14:05 – of course this is true for sites upwards
14:07 – of 30 or 40 products
14:09 – 30 or 40 uh you know skus but
14:12 – for people that use you know search on a
14:15 – site
14:16 – they normally convert at least 10 times
14:18 – better if not more
14:20 – than people who don’t use the site
14:21 – search right so you’re talking about the
14:22 – highest quality traffic you know people
14:24 – with the highest intent are the ones who
14:26 – are going to use the search bar
14:27 – so the first thing is how many people
14:29 – actually use the search bar the second
14:30 – is
14:31 – what percentage of them convert and the
14:33 – third is what percentages
14:34 – of them bounce off so now you know if
14:37 – your search is truly even searches you
14:38 – know serving results
14:39 – that matter so if 90 of the people that
14:41 – made the search are going to bounce off
14:43 – instantly as soon as they see the
14:44 – results you’re serving them completely
14:47 – you know broken results so that’s the
14:50 – first bit we just search
14:51 – you know you know first part which is
14:52 – you know search usage the second part is
14:54 – serving the results so you’ve got to be
14:56 – able to you know translate your product
14:59 – feed your product information into
15:00 – really intuitive results
15:02 – so normally what what a good search
15:04 – solution would do is not only would it
15:06 – search
15:06 – for the right product name it would also
15:08 – search the products description
15:10 – the products reviews to serve results
15:12 – that are relevant to what the user is
15:13 – searching for
15:15 – so um you are you and what you’re also
15:17 – looking to do is and which is why
15:19 – you know in the way that we do things uh
15:21 – it is it has worked out beautifully well
15:23 – for our customers is
15:24 – we will never sort of set up and forget
15:27 – about
15:28 – anything such as a search right we will
15:29 – never set up and forget about
15:31 – in fact that that’s true for everything
15:33 – that’s true for email marketing
15:34 – which is also something that we do
15:36 – that’s true for reviews that’s true for
15:38 – search that’s true for everything you
15:39 – cannot set up and forget about
15:41 – um anything so with search especially
15:44 – what you can do is once you’ve set it up
15:46 – you can continuously analyze
15:48 – what are the queries that people are
15:50 – searching for on the site what are the
15:52 – queries they’re entering on their search
15:53 – bar and that’ll tell you you know
15:55 – whether they’re finding what they’re
15:56 – looking for or not like there are
15:58 – you know phone repair path sites you
15:59 – know um auto part sites that we’ve
16:01 – worked with where we have seen search
16:03 – queries
16:04 – in in the hundreds or the thousands of
16:06 – parts that they never had
16:08 – in the in you know in their inventory
16:10 – and they have ended up
16:11 – you know com starting new business lines
16:12 – because people were inherently coming
16:14 – and searching for stuff
16:16 – so that’s insane that’s data that’s
16:18 – completely oh nobody even looks at that
16:19 – data today
16:24 – that sounds like super complicated to
16:26 – get in place i know you guys haven’t
16:27 – have tools i’m not like plugging you
16:28 – guys but
16:29 – i mean if if somebody’s not using
16:31 – ConvertCart right like
16:33 – how do they go about doing that of
16:35 – really like tuning search
16:36 – and then monitoring the metrics of
16:38 – search and then essentially like doing
16:40 – cro just on that search funnel like what
16:42 – what’s the framework of how they do that
16:44 – in all honesty i mean
16:46 – i mean i’m not of course you know we do
16:48 – that fantastic really well and i think
16:51 – we are great at it so that’s obviously
16:52 – there but there are search tools
16:53 – available
16:54 – that you can just plug onto the site and
16:56 – you can uh you know get going so there
16:58 – is a
16:58 – very degree of sort of uh you know
17:00 – complexity and very degree of
17:02 – flexibility with which you can use them
17:04 – so some of them will allow everything
17:05 – but they’re going to be you know you
17:07 – need to be half an einstein to be able
17:08 – to do that
17:09 – and the other ones are not going to be
17:11 – as flexible as you would want
17:12 – and you know the other thing is you’ve
17:14 – got to keep business use cases in mind
17:16 – right so for example in a lot of cases
17:19 – people will only search for the sku
17:21 – number
17:21 – they will not search for because the
17:23 – site is so specific the business is such
17:25 – that they’ll just search for the
17:26 – exact product that they’re looking for
17:29 – um but another case is that they’re
17:30 – doing the exact opposite they’re just
17:32 – searching for some
17:32 – really vague terms and you’ve got to
17:34 – connect the product so i think
17:36 – half of the i i think less than half 30
17:38 – 30 to 40
17:39 – of the success depends on the tool you
17:41 – choose the remaining is really what you
17:43 – do with it
17:44 – got it so that process like similar to
17:46 – cro earlier right like
17:48 – signing up for the different cro tools
17:49 – you see in these groups like is not is
17:51 – not the answer it’s the process of how
17:53 – you use those it’s having the data it’s
17:54 – analyzing that data and running tests
17:57 – uh so i definitely hear you on that over
17:59 – you know with search
18:00 – and especially if you look at the
18:02 – devices you know if you look at desktop
18:04 – and if you look at mobile
18:05 – desktop is more navigation friendly you
18:06 – will see that a conversion rate on
18:08 – desktop is generally twice that of
18:09 – mobile
18:10 – because mobile is not navigation
18:12 – friendly you know shopify themes
18:14 – most of them inherently have the the
18:16 – menu button the hamburger icon on the
18:18 – top left side of the screen which is the
18:20 – hardest
18:20 – place to reach on a cell phone yeah and
18:22 – so people what i mean they’re just
18:24 – trying to
18:24 – make their journey shorter so they’ll
18:26 – just shoot for the search bar and
18:28 – and if that’s a serves you know crap
18:31 – results so then
18:32 – yeah god help you yeah so search i mean
18:35 – um
18:36 – i didn’t realize how deep you could go
18:38 – into search of like consistently
18:39 – monitoring queries and running tests on
18:42 – you know query by query results and um
18:44 – you know essentially
18:45 – just doing cro just within um the search
18:47 – side i
18:48 – i want to step uh back a little higher
18:50 – level and go into more navigation like
18:52 – we talked about and then mobile
18:54 – but anything else to add on the search
18:55 – side specifically um
18:57 – other than you know running that search
18:59 – process
19:00 – the way you run cro on the rest of the
19:02 – website like thinking of it like a
19:03 – funnel anything else big to add on
19:04 – search
19:06 – um i think depending on the business i
19:10 – would want to sort of you know change
19:12 – the amount of emphasis that’s given to
19:14 – search in the experience as such
19:16 – um you know i think your company does a
19:18 – fantastic job of you know helping people
19:20 – find what they’re looking for on the
19:21 – side that’s the most direct way of
19:23 – making that happen
19:24 – you know chat is very natural as well
19:26 – and people are gonna end up asking at
19:28 – some point hey you know what this is
19:29 – what i’m looking for do you have it and
19:30 – you know if there’s somebody manning the
19:32 – other side of the jet
19:34 – instead of just a robot i i hate talking
19:36 – to chat bots by the way so
19:38 – i i’m a big advocate of so i’m a big
19:40 – advocate of what you guys are doing
19:42 – um so that’s also a search bar really
19:45 – speaking that that’s also search that’s
19:47 – also discovery
19:48 – i mean it’s it’s a lot of other things
19:49 – but social discovery so that definitely
19:51 – helps but as far as search goes you know
19:53 – if you are a
19:54 – if you’re a business that has you know
19:56 – thousands of products
19:57 – uh like we’ve worked for the business
19:58 – that are at 600 000 skus
20:00 – um right so that’s a lot of products so
20:03 – what we did for them is we put
20:04 – the search bar front and center middle
20:06 – of the screen
20:07 – and we you know basically their entire
20:10 – home page was
20:11 – just for discovery so you had all the
20:13 – brands they you know
20:15 – featured all the possible you know
20:18 – vehicles that they supported so it was
20:20 – an auto parts store
20:21 – of course yeah um so that was really
20:23 – interesting got it got it that makes
20:25 – sense
20:26 – um let’s dig into the navigation side
20:29 – right so like search is an element of
20:30 – navigation but um
20:32 – you know let’s dig into the things that
20:34 – stores need to consider
20:35 – on the navigation side of like how
20:37 – they’re structuring
20:39 – um you know nav and sub nav and you know
20:41 – the differences on mobile versus desktop
20:43 – and filtering products and all those
20:44 – types of things
20:45 – um i know search is a is a big part of
20:47 – that but um you know what are some other
20:49 – things that um
20:50 – you guys start to realize in your
20:52 – testing routine that can have you know
20:53 – really big impact as far as
20:55 – how you structure navigation right so a
20:58 – couple of data points you may want to
20:59 – take a look at
21:00 – if you want to find problems there are
21:02 – the time that somebody spends with us
21:04 – on your site versus the number of pages
21:06 – they view
21:07 – so if you if you see people up jumping
21:08 – across too many pages
21:10 – they’re probably looking for something
21:12 – that they’re not able to find
21:13 – we also look at another interesting data
21:15 – point which is actually more related to
21:17 – product page optimization which we can
21:18 – talk about later but
21:20 – um you would see that there may be a
21:23 – sort of uh
21:25 – anomaly you may find with category page
21:29 – or collections page the amount of time
21:31 – spent how fast
21:32 – how far the user scrolls down and
21:36 – how they’re able to uh you know
21:39 – i mean how many products they engage
21:40 – with from each category so basically
21:43 – you’re trying to understand if if at all
21:46 – i mean are they a shopper
21:47 – or are they just you know jumping around
21:50 – um
21:51 – where site nav plays an important role
21:53 – is how specific
21:55 – can you make the um
22:00 – how specific can you make it for the
22:02 – user um you know
22:03 – uh when they’re finding something or or
22:06 – let’s turn the table around how specific
22:08 – of a
22:08 – request can you generate from the user
22:10 – right so if you’re selling
22:12 – fashion you could just have t-shirts
22:14 – right or you could have t-shirts men and
22:16 – women or you could have t-shirts
22:18 – uh men and then you could have either
22:20 – sizes or colors
22:21 – right or or you could have you know
22:24 – polos or crewnecks and and different
22:27 – types of t-shirts so
22:29 – the more specific you get the better it
22:31 – is
22:32 – typically speaking unless if you’re if
22:34 – you’re sort of a
22:35 – if you’re a deals store and you just
22:37 – want people to take a look at those
22:39 – eighty percent off that kind of stuff so
22:41 – if you’re doing that gimmicky stuff then
22:42 – i’m i think you’re anyways gonna be a
22:45 – business that’s driving a lot of your
22:46 – traffic directly to the product page so
22:48 – navigation doesn’t matter for you at all
22:49 – but you got to get more specific
22:52 – um with the navigation at least attempt
22:55 – to do that one of the ways in which you
22:56 – could also do that is use
22:58 – uh product selection wizards or create
23:01 – these
23:01 – you know flows within your experience um
23:05 – there’s this site you could we could
23:07 – probably put the link up for the
23:08 – audience you know it’s called
23:09 – repairsuniverse.com we’ve done it for
23:11 – them
23:11 – so they’re a phone repair part store and
23:14 – you know we’ve helped them create a
23:16 – wizard so you could really nail down
23:17 – what you want
23:18 – without having to go through the
23:20 – navigation or search or anything
23:22 – else got it yeah i’ve seen that with um
23:26 – you know product recommendation quizzes
23:28 – and things like that i know
23:29 – it’s it’s different than a wizard but
23:31 – it’s kind of like that same concept of
23:33 – you know asking questions
23:34 – down a flow that leads to these are the
23:37 – three products out of 600
23:38 – um that are probably a fit for you right
23:41 – um we we do that a little bit
23:42 – uh for certain clients on on the chat
23:45 – conversation so we’ll like ask them that
23:47 – in conversations
23:48 – uh naturally get them down to what
23:50 – products they’re interested in and then
23:51 – basically link them to uh to collections
23:54 – or pre-filtered collections
23:55 – um what are some of the technical
23:57 – limitations you guys see to get that
23:59 – stuff in place because i think like
24:00:00 – sidebar
24:01:00 – layered navigation different people call
24:02:00 – it different things but like it’s not
24:04:00 – uh i think we’ve all experienced those
24:06:00 – or we know okay like we would benefit by
24:08:00 – just having people be able to drill down
24:10:00 – and you know click down in the sidebar
24:12:00 – or something but it seems like
24:13:00 – maybe it’s a shopify thing i’m not sure
24:15:00 – but it just seems like some stores uh
24:17:00 – struggle
24:18:00 – with getting that stuff in place what
24:19:00 – what are the big technical limitations
24:21:00 – to getting that in place and like what
24:23:00 – general direction should a store be
24:25:00 – looking at with their web team to say
24:26:00 – okay here’s how we could solve it
24:28:00 – so there are two ways to do it i think
24:30:00 – the first step is is
24:32:00 – is more iterative where you’re trying to
24:33:00 – crack what works for you
24:35:00 – and the second step is where you’re sure
24:37:00 – some things works and you just want to
24:38:00 – code it in and keep it for good
24:41:00 – um the first one i think is more
24:43:00 – important i think
24:44:00 – shopify and in fact woocommerce big
24:46:00 – commerce
24:47:00 – magento all of these e-commerce
24:49:00 – platforms now allow for
24:51:00 – uh you know a lot of you know uh overlay
24:54:00 – up optimization or overlay customization
24:56:00 – like for example in our case how we
24:58:00 – we do good for clients we just have to
25:00:00 – add a javascript
25:01:00 – snippet to the site and all of the
25:03:00 – improvements that we run are run as an
25:05:00 – overlay so there is zero involvement
25:07:00 – from the client’s technical team or the
25:09:00 – design team or anybody else for that
25:10:00 – matter
25:11:00 – the entire ownership is ours and the
25:14:00 – the improvements will run as a
25:15:00 – javascript overlay and they’ll run
25:17:00 – asynchronously so what that really and
25:19:00 – that’s important because what that means
25:21:00 – is that there’ll be no
25:22:00 – negative impact on the site load times
25:24:00 – and that’s that’s
25:25:00 – that’s great right so um that’s when you
25:28:00 – would want to iterate and sort of
25:30:00 – perfect what is it that you’re looking
25:31:00 – for
25:32:00 – right how do you want your sidebar to
25:33:00 – look how do you want your navigation to
25:35:00 – look once you’ve nailed down with a few
25:37:00 – tests
25:38:00 – um how you wanted to look on mobile how
25:40:00 – you want to look on desktop you can then
25:42:00 – code it in and make make the change
25:44:00 – permanent on your site the other thing
25:46:00 – is
25:46:00 – which which is good that you mentioned
25:48:00 – that is you could you could and you
25:50:00 – should actually
25:50:00 – crack this experience separately
25:54:00 – um you know for mobile and desktop and
25:58:00 – for other devices basically
25:59:00 – so and you could do that so you could
26:01:00 – actually look at data separately when
26:03:00 – you’re a b testing
26:04:00 – um on how conversion rates are
26:07:00 – influenced depending on the experience
26:09:00 – that you serve for mobile
26:10:00 – and for desktop and then serve
26:13:00 – completely different experiences in both
26:14:00 – i mean of course it’s going to be
26:15:00 – different but i’m saying
26:16:00 – they could be drastically different um
26:18:00 – depending on what converts and
26:20:00 – you know make conversion and experience
26:21:00 – the the most uh
26:24:00 – uh primary piece basically
26:28:00 – audit got it yeah so what i’m really
26:29:00 – hearing is is um you know testing it
26:32:00 – first
26:32:00 – before you hard code it in and also
26:34:00 – desktop versus mobile like it’s gonna be
26:36:00 – hit very differently so
26:38:00 – um i i think that’s a good uh good segue
26:41:00 – into
26:42:00 – what we had um riffed on a little bit
26:43:00 – before about really like product pages
26:46:00 – and
26:46:00 – product pages for mobile specifically um
26:49:00 – you know what are some of the big things
26:51:00 – that um stores need to get right when it
26:52:00 – comes to mobile
26:54:00 – um and you know different optimization
26:57:00 – elements that are really important for
26:58:00 – mobile
26:58:00 – how are you guys thinking about that
26:59:00 – with clients the product pages are the
27:02:00 – most important pages on an e-commerce
27:04:00 – site
27:04:00 – that’s where the action is right so
27:06:00 – that’s
27:08:00 – that’s the central piece in in in the
27:11:00 – optimization process
27:12:00 – uh i don’t want to say apart from of
27:14:00 – course the cart page but
27:16:00 – but but you know product page is where
27:19:00 – the decision is
27:20:00 – is made cart pages is where that
27:22:00 – decision is
27:23:00 – materialized it’s brought brought into
27:25:00 – reality right so both are equally
27:26:00 – important but
27:28:00 – if you were to optimize a product page
27:30:00 – it is
27:32:00 – 100 uh you know a function of data in
27:36:00 – the way that
27:37:00 – product page generates a lot of data
27:39:00 – right that’s where you will see the most
27:41:00 – number of mouse interactions
27:42:00 – the most amount of time spent the most
27:45:00 – farther somebody would
27:46:00 – you know the you’re further down
27:48:00 – somebody would scroll so those are the
27:50:00 – things that
27:51:00 – you’re going to really have to put to
27:52:00 – use the other thing is see we at convert
27:54:00 – cart
27:55:00 – and all the other companies that i’ve
27:56:00 – consulted and worked with over the last
27:58:00 – many years
27:59:00 – i have always encouraged companies to be
28:01:00 – very outward looking you know a lot of
28:02:00 – the cases companies are very inward
28:04:00 – looking right so they’re always looking
28:05:00 – at oh what could we do better and you
28:06:00 – know what
28:07:00 – what is something that i could do better
28:09:00 – with my team or better with my
28:11:00 – technology
28:11:00 – you know sometimes that often leads to
28:14:00 – people reinventing the wheel which is
28:15:00 – not
28:16:00 – necessary it shouldn’t be important
28:18:00 – there are some amazing
28:19:00 – sites out there that are doing a stellar
28:21:00 – job at converting customers some of them
28:23:00 – are going to be your competitors
28:24:00 – right some of them are going to be from
28:26:00 – different industries
28:27:00 – and you feel free to make art your own
28:30:00 – you know
28:30:00 – um uh i have a book it’s called uh
28:34:00 – still like an artist it’s by this artist
28:36:00 – called
28:37:00 – austin clean yeah so it’s it’s right
28:39:00 – across from where i’m sitting right now
28:42:00 – and uh that’s all he talks about in the
28:43:00 – book he says it’s okay to steal as long
28:45:00 – as you make
28:46:00 – the stolen piece of art your own so you
28:49:00 – should not reinvent the wheel but if you
28:50:00 – talk if you come back to product page
28:52:00 – optimization
28:53:00 – i see companies obsessing over a b
28:56:00 – testing the
28:57:00 – the color of the call to action button
28:59:00 – right hand
29:00:00 – and really uh you know insignificant
29:03:00 – stuff
29:03:00 – that is not going to change the
29:04:00 – customer’s behavior are you most like
29:06:00 – more likely to click on a button if it’s
29:08:00 – red or if it’s green nobody’s
29:10:00 – nobody gives a damn you know so you’ve
29:13:00 – got to focus on the right problem
29:15:00 – and uh um
29:18:00 – you’ve got to crack two or three key
29:20:00 – things you’ve got to first crack the
29:21:00 – structure
29:23:00 – of the page itself you you need to make
29:26:00 – sure you answer three questions
29:27:00 – incredibly well which is why should i
29:29:00 – buy what you’re selling
29:30:00 – why should i buy it from you and not
29:32:00 – somebody else and why should i do that
29:34:00 – right now like these are some
29:35:00 – some really important questions if
29:37:00 – you’re trying to sell something to
29:38:00 – somebody
29:39:00 – do it in your site’s experience this is
29:41:00 – relevant not only relevant business
29:43:00 – advice sales advice this is a relevant
29:44:00 – e-commerce optimization advice as well
29:47:00 – so that means your value propositions
29:49:00 – need to be clear your social proof and
29:50:00 – trust
29:51:00 – information need to be needs to be clear
29:52:00 – price should be clear reviews
29:55:00 – should be clear product images should be
29:57:00 – fantastic so those are some really basic
29:59:00 – things
30:00:00 – the rest of the optimization is going to
30:02:00 – purely depend on data i see a lot of
30:04:00 – sites running product ads and they’re
30:06:00 – driving a load of traffic a lot of
30:08:00 – traffic on
30:09:00 – their product pages directly um
30:12:00 – and that means they’re shortening that
30:15:00 – traffic’s journey and they’re
30:16:00 – relying on their product pages to be
30:18:00 – landing pages to convert hundreds of
30:20:00 – thousands
30:20:00 – of dollars in revenue um that’s going to
30:23:00 – make optimization a little bit harder
30:25:00 – because you have shorter journeys
30:27:00 – so it’s harder to figure out what worked
30:29:00 – um but how we would typically do it and
30:31:00 – for
30:32:00 – for different devices is we would look
30:34:00 – at um
30:35:00 – so let’s let’s just say uh we we figure
30:38:00 – out that
30:39:00 – there’s a product description video and
30:42:00 – people who watched the video
30:44:00 – uh they converted 20 better let’s just
30:46:00 – say that’s the hypothesis
30:48:00 – right that’s that you know what if
30:49:00 – people watch the video more
30:51:00 – i think the conversion rate is going to
30:52:00 – go up because the video makes a very
30:54:00 – compelling case for the product so what
30:55:00 – we’re going to do with the a b test is
30:56:00 – we’re going to make the video the
30:58:00 – primary
30:59:00 – thing they see instead of the images
31:01:00 – when they come to the product page
31:03:00 – right so we’re going to run that a b
31:04:00 – test and we’ll run that a b test across
31:06:00 – devices across channels
31:07:00 – so people coming from paid organic
31:09:00 – direct other channels
31:11:00 – and people that are coming from mobile
31:14:00 – and desktop everybody’s going to see
31:15:00 – that
31:16:00 – so you let that test run and normally
31:17:00 – what i would recommend companies to do
31:20:00 – and we do that for our clients is
31:21:00 – we will then you know backtrack the test
31:24:00 – so we’ll see
31:25:00 – okay maybe the test itself was neutral
31:27:00 – and there’s no improvement
31:29:00 – but how did that a b test do for the
31:31:00 – traffic split on just mobile
31:33:00 – or for the traffic split on just desktop
31:36:00 – or for the traffic split for the paid
31:38:00 – traffic on mobile
31:39:00 – alone and turns out you will find some
31:42:00 – small
31:42:00 – wins in in when you break an a b test
31:45:00 – down and that’s
31:46:00 – that’s really where success is so you
31:49:00 – because you know
31:49:00 – if you’re gonna be optim if you if you
31:51:00 – are getting into optimization to run
31:53:00 – this one test that’s gonna change your
31:55:00 – life and you know
31:56:00 – you know you’re gonna go by a tesla it’s
31:58:00 – not gonna happen that’s not gonna happen
32:00:00 – so you you you’ve got to what you’re
32:03:00 – looking for is
32:04:00 – is you know several small wins to get to
32:07:00 – that one big victory that’s really what
32:08:00 – you’re after
32:10:00 – got it yeah that’s something um you know
32:12:00 – i know mitch had mentioned initially
32:14:00 – when we first chatted that like
32:15:00 – that was something that you guys have
32:17:00 – been able to do really well is not
32:18:00 – necessarily like figure out what’s
32:19:00 – what’s the bright color of the product
32:21:00 – button
32:21:00 – but instead you know like four return
32:24:00 – visitors from facebook that go to this
32:27:00 – you know section of the site like this
32:29:00 – is how to get you know a 20
32:30:00 – bump in conversion on those guys right
32:32:00 – so it’s like sections of your visitors
32:34:00 – or cohorts of your visitors
32:35:00 – dig a little bit deeper into that part
32:37:00 – of like what are some of the um
32:39:00 – the insights you guys have seen or
32:41:00 – examples from clients that you’ve seen
32:43:00 – where
32:44:00 – where you found cohorts of visitors or a
32:47:00 – successful test within a cohort of
32:49:00 – visitors
32:50:00 – um that you’ve then you know rolled out
32:52:00 – for that cohort in the future
32:54:00 – so rather than just you know what tests
32:56:00 – have worked what tests have worked
32:57:00 – within certain cohorts so people can
32:59:00 – kind of get their gears turning
33:00:00 – themselves
33:01:00 – so we see that all the time okay it’s
33:04:00 – not
33:05:00 – something that’s rare at all it’s very
33:07:00 – common
33:08:00 – and that’s why you know i am one of i
33:11:00 – see a lot of people in the space and i
33:13:00 – see a lot of influencers in the space i
33:15:00 – was the other day i was looking at this
33:16:00 – round table i
33:17:00 – i remember who it was forget about it
33:19:00 – but i was seeing a lot of talk
33:21:00 – about you know sort of not passing these
33:25:00 – statements
33:26:00 – in marketing that are you know sweeping
33:28:00 – statements and
33:29:00 – for example somebody said you know what
33:31:00 – facebook ads are going to be screwed
33:32:00 – with the with the ios update so the
33:35:00 – other guy said don’t say that you know
33:37:00 – you don’t know what’s going to happen
33:38:00 – etc so i think you know what we don’t
33:40:00 – need to
33:41:00 – behave that way so there’s a lot of data
33:43:00 – when i’m making some of these statements
33:44:00 – for example i made a statement about
33:45:00 – search
33:46:00 – there’s a lot of confidence because i’ve
33:48:00 – seen a lot of data backing that up
33:50:00 – right and i’ve seen that across hundreds
33:52:00 – of sites across
33:53:00 – at least 40 industries um and i’ve seen
33:57:00 – business owners themselves saying wow
33:59:00 – that’s amazing you know
34:01:00 – they’ve themselves seen it so bottom
34:04:00 – line with this kind of optimization or
34:05:00 – you know a common example that i can
34:07:00 – tell you is very simply put
34:08:00 – always repeat visitors are going to
34:11:00 – convert significantly better
34:13:00 – than new visitors that’s obvious
34:14:00 – everybody knows that
34:16:00 – you will also see that the conversion
34:19:00 – rate for repeat visitors on mobile and
34:21:00 – desktop
34:22:00 – will be comparable although the overall
34:25:00 – conversion rate on mobile and desktop
34:27:00 – will always be very different so mobile
34:28:00 – will normally convert half
34:30:00 – as good as desktop but for repeat
34:32:00 – visitors they don’t care if they’re on
34:33:00 – mobile on desktop
34:34:00 – that will still they’ll still it’ll
34:36:00 – still be comparable in their case
34:39:00 – uh but there are a few things that
34:40:00 – people don’t look at for example there’s
34:42:00 – uh
34:43:00 – there’s something called a lapse point
34:45:00 – um a lapse point is essentially the
34:47:00 – number of days it takes for a visitor to
34:50:00 – become a churn customer
34:51:00 – every business has a lapse point they
34:53:00 – don’t calculate it of course we help
34:55:00 – them calculate that but
34:56:00 – a lapse point is essentially you know
34:58:00 – for example for
34:59:00 – um somebody who’s selling fashion 60
35:02:00 – days could be their laps point which is
35:03:00 – if that customer has not bought from you
35:05:00 – within 60 days
35:07:00 – they’re probably never going to buy from
35:08:00 – you again right
35:10:00 – and so so i want to slow down for that
35:12:00 – part so lapse point is the number of
35:14:00 – days
35:15:00 – before uh a new visitor or somebody that
35:18:00 – hasn’t bought
35:19:00 – is not going to buy like after that
35:21:00 – point they’re very unlikely to buy
35:23:00 – so so so lapse point is a metric
35:26:00 – applicable only to your existing
35:27:00 – customers so somebody was bought from
35:29:00 – you once
35:30:00 – if they don’t buy again for the next 60
35:32:00 – days the the period is lapsed and
35:34:00 – they’re not going to buy from you ever
35:35:00 – again
35:36:00 – but that’s laps so 60 days is your 60
35:38:00 – days is your lapse point
35:40:00 – right so we were able to in
35:43:00 – in many cases run an a b test and and
35:46:00 – see how that a b test performed for
35:49:00 – returning visitors
35:51:00 – right so we of course ran run an a b
35:55:00 – test for example on the cart page right
35:56:00 – we added some
35:58:00 – recommendations maybe right so we
36:00:00 – decided to cross-sell
36:02:00 – and we saw the ab test results for the
36:04:00 – entire site then we split that
36:06:00 – those test results and saw them
36:07:00 – separately for new visitors and
36:08:00 – returning visitors
36:10:00 – for returning visitors the ones that
36:13:00 – were
36:13:00 – past this lapse point and they were
36:15:00 – visiting the site
36:16:00 – we were able to lift their conversion
36:18:00 – rate so we basically brought the
36:21:00 – we basically pushed the lapse point
36:23:00 – further from 60
36:24:00 – to 80 or even 90 days because we
36:27:00 – converted them so their lifetime value
36:28:00 – of the customer went up
36:30:00 – that’s phenom i mean if for anybody who
36:32:00 – listens to this and they understand what
36:33:00 – i’m talking about
36:35:00 – that’s what you’re after that’s what
36:36:00 – makes an e-commerce business successful
36:38:00 – you don’t want to make people buy a
36:40:00 – product once you want to
36:42:00 – you know really put your put your hands
36:43:00 – deep into their pockets
36:46:00 – and probably have their credit card on
36:47:00 – file forever and they should be happy
36:49:00 – doing that
36:50:00 – yeah that’s powerful so that i mean
36:52:00 – that’s a takeaway
36:54:00 – i i don’t know if i’ve i’ve i don’t know
36:56:00 – if i’ve heard
36:57:00 – our audience actually really dig into
36:59:00 – that at a granular level everybody knows
37:00:00 – about repeat orders
37:01:00 – but the concept of what is the lapse
37:03:00 – point and what can you do to extend that
37:05:00 – out
37:05:00 – um that’s a whole testing process in and
37:07:00 – of itself right
37:08:00 – um what what other what other um you
37:12:00 – know channel level insights have you
37:13:00 – guys seen that’s a good little golden
37:14:00 – nugget like anything else to dig into on
37:16:00 – like
37:17:00 – channel level cro yeah so
37:21:00 – see that’s that’s really so that’s
37:23:00 – actually one of the first things that
37:25:00 – uh our clients um look at and go over
37:29:00 – because it takes time for
37:30:00 – for this some of the more complex stuff
37:32:00 – to happen because you need to have a lot
37:33:00 – of data
37:34:00 – to run highly statistical statistically
37:37:00 – significant stuff right so
37:38:00 – also i i mean we are thrilled when you
37:41:00 – know we sign up clients that have a lot
37:43:00 – of traffic because then we can do a lot
37:44:00 – but we are equally thrilled when they
37:46:00 – are slightly smaller because
37:47:00 – we are working directly with the owners
37:49:00 – and we have like
37:51:00 – a yes on almost everything we suggest so
37:53:00 – that makes our job also equally exciting
37:55:00 – so we can do really adventurous stuff
37:57:00 – but
37:58:00 – as far as channel level stuff goes now
38:00:00 – there’s a serious amount of money being
38:02:00 – spent on google for example
38:04:00 – or your you know facebook ads and that
38:06:00 – kind of stuff
38:07:00 – and one thing that can turn the balance
38:10:00 – sheet around for an e-commerce business
38:11:00 – is how your paid traffic converts
38:13:00 – if it converts just twenty percent
38:15:00 – better
38:16:00 – uh your return on ad spend is going to
38:18:00 – change forever
38:19:00 – um you’ll you’ll be able to spend more
38:21:00 – money on ads which means you’ll be able
38:23:00 – to bring more traffic which then again
38:24:00 – converts a little bit better
38:26:00 – so your revenue is going up for good
38:28:00 – right you’re set
38:29:00 – basically and um that’s why we look at
38:32:00 – each channel separately
38:34:00 – um and you’ve got to do that but
38:37:00 – most businesses want us to take a look
38:39:00 – at the paid channel i mean they’re not
38:40:00 – aware that we can do that once they find
38:42:00 – out that we can look at the channel
38:43:00 – level they say hey you know what
38:44:00 – why don’t you look at my paid traffic
38:46:00 – i’m paying my agency hundreds of
38:47:00 – thousands of dollars
38:48:00 – um you know every year and um
38:51:00 – and i i don’t know what’s really
38:53:00 – happening you know our rois has been so
38:55:00 – we always also an interesting question
38:56:00 – we always ask is
38:58:00 – has your roi has grown over the last
39:00:00 – three years or two years
39:02:00 – in most cases it has it right so people
39:04:00 – don’t
39:05:00 – normally look at the year-on-year trend
39:07:00 – but it but
39:08:00 – if you plot the year-on-year trend for
39:10:00 – something like ros for most e-commerce
39:12:00 – companies
39:12:00 – it will sit right on top of each other
39:14:00 – there’s no change in their trend for the
39:16:00 – year you know season is better
39:17:00 – you know off season’s worse so
39:21:00 – so one of the key things we would want
39:22:00 – to do is look at their paid traffic
39:25:00 – specifically focus aggressively on
39:28:00 – building a
39:29:00 – solid email list for them from that
39:31:00 – traffic leveraging that email list so
39:33:00 – then make sure that they convert through
39:35:00 – you know through email marketing you
39:37:00 – know you create better retargeting
39:38:00 – audiences out of them
39:40:00 – do whatever you can on the demand chain
39:41:00 – side on the ad side
39:43:00 – but on the cro side whatever it is that
39:45:00 – we can do to analyze because
39:49:00 – there is you know basis which
39:53:00 – if you look at paid channel if you look
39:54:00 – at if you look at the paid channel for
39:55:00 – any business
39:57:00 – you will instantly all you know get a
39:59:00 – lot of data from the business right so
40:00:00 – you this is how much we spend this is
40:02:00 – how much revenue we make this is our
40:03:00 – roas
40:04:00 – the average order value for that channel
40:06:00 – is going to be different um then you
40:08:00 – will see other data so how many visits
40:09:00 – does it take for a customer to actually
40:11:00 – convert
40:12:00 – how many uh how much time do they spend
40:14:00 – on the site so those metrics are gonna
40:15:00 – really matter so
40:16:00 – what you will instantly also start to
40:18:00 – realize is of the total traffic they
40:20:00 – drive from that channel
40:22:00 – 50 of the traffic they’ve been driving
40:24:00 – is completely crap right so
40:26:00 – there are cases where we are also able
40:28:00 – to tell them hey you know what just uh
40:30:00 – stop any ads you’re running on
40:32:00 – washington and ohio
40:34:00 – completely leave them out you have zero
40:36:00 – conversions from those regions
40:38:00 – so we in fact built this tool called
40:40:00 – ppcgear.com it’s under approval at the
40:42:00 – moment it’s not yet
40:43:00 – out um but that
40:46:00 – you know at the click of a button tells
40:48:00 – people where they are leaking money in
40:49:00 – their adwords or you know what are some
40:51:00 – of the
40:51:00 – low i mean that’s unread to cro but but
40:54:00 – i find it really painful
40:55:00 – if companies you know spend money uh
40:58:00 – unproductively
40:59:00 – and i think that’s not a function of
41:00:00 – them not being able to spend it
41:02:00 – productively it’s the fact that
41:04:00 – as i said entrepreneurs too close to the
41:05:00 – problem they’re too passionate about
41:07:00 – what they’re doing
41:09:00 – they don’t have the time to scrutinize
41:10:00 – what their agency is doing for them
41:12:00 – so they i i mean there’s no better way
41:15:00 – out for them
41:16:00 – i’m uh i’m smiling because we’ve been
41:18:00 – going through this we’ve been doing uh
41:19:00 – doing some ad tests for helpful
41:21:00 – specifically
41:22:00 – and um yeah
41:25:00 – the business owner’s too close to the
41:26:00 – problem right um the way i would word it
41:28:00 – or what i kind of got to this aha moment
41:30:00 – last week
41:31:00 – is as i’m digging deeper into the data i
41:33:00 – realized like
41:34:00 – unemotionally and objectively like it’s
41:36:00 – not working we need to change we need to
41:38:00 – course correct the ad spend and
41:39:00 – uh look at a number of different things
41:40:00 – just normal advertising stuff um but i
41:43:00 – really wanted it to work and it was kind
41:44:00 – of like one of my main rocks for this
41:46:00 – past quarter
41:46:00 – and um i said i think we can figure it
41:48:00 – out i think we can get it to work
41:50:00 – um and i’m the one that makes a decision
41:52:00 – on that right so it’s like
41:53:00 – if i want to keep writing the check i
41:54:00 – can write the check um but that doesn’t
41:56:00 – mean it’s actually gonna work and there
41:58:00 – wasn’t actually data to support of
41:59:00 – saying okay like let’s just continue
42:00:00 – going down the path and so i
42:02:00 – totally resonate with that of like
42:03:00 – business owners just get too close to
42:05:00 – the problem
42:06:00 – and i think having having somebody like
42:08:00 – you guys that
42:10:00 – just thinks of it methodically and has a
42:11:00 – framework that the business owner
42:13:00 – understands it’s not like some secret
42:14:00 – sauce where you just send them reports
42:16:00 – and they go oh my god i don’t know how
42:17:00 – they’re doing this like
42:18:00 – when you show people how to run
42:20:00 – effective cro and how to analyze it and
42:22:00 – how to just do it methodically
42:24:00 – it gives them a lot more confidence and
42:25:00 – clarity right um i
42:27:00 – i want to respect your time i know we’re
42:28:00 – coming up on time um
42:30:00 – are there any other like major insights
42:32:00 – or takeaways that you think are
42:34:00 – you know most important um for listeners
42:36:00 – you know they’re they’re all really like
42:38:00 – six seven figure stores so they’ve got
42:40:00 – traffic they’re spending money on ads a
42:41:00 – lot of them are probably doing some
42:43:00 – level of cro already
42:45:00 – or they think they are um you know what
42:47:00 – are what are the major insights you
42:48:00 – think
42:49:00 – um you know somebody should take away
42:50:00 – from this
42:53:00 – i think one of the important things is
42:57:00 – i think the reliance on general reliance
43:00:00 – on marketing agencies
43:02:00 – is is i think there has to be an end to
43:04:00 – that at some point
43:06:00 – um i was looking at a lot of data so we
43:08:00 – were talking to our own clients
43:09:00 – i think we share a you know a few names
43:13:00 – and
43:14:00 – um we we happen to know a few people
43:16:00 – commonly so
43:18:00 – generally speaking for all the people
43:19:00 – that i’ve spoken to i’ve seen that
43:20:00 – e-commerce companies are likely to
43:22:00 – switch
43:22:00 – agency every six to seven months at an
43:25:00 – average
43:26:00 – so that’s how impatient you know
43:29:00 – that that those switches are and that’s
43:32:00 – unfortunate because neither does the
43:33:00 – agency get any long-term value from that
43:35:00 – engagement
43:36:00 – and if you switched six seven eight
43:38:00 – months after signing up with an agency
43:39:00 – definitely you know you’ve leaked some
43:41:00 – money you you’ve not seen any value
43:42:00 – there
43:44:00 – and the number one reason for that is
43:45:00 – because the expectation is that somebody
43:48:00 – from
43:48:00 – outside of your business probably not
43:51:00 – having worked in the same industry as
43:53:00 – you
43:54:00 – um and does not own any technology
43:56:00 – that’s the key piece they don’t own any
43:58:00 – technology so they’re not technologists
44:00:00 – they’re they’re merely human resource
44:03:00 – that’s the problem they solve right
44:04:00 – that’s a problem an agency solves
44:07:00 – but they come into your business
44:08:00 – understand this context
44:10:00 – and then help you solve everything so
44:13:00 – there are two kinds of entrepreneurs
44:15:00 – right and this is a question that you’ve
44:16:00 – got to ask yourself
44:17:00 – each entrepreneur needs to ask
44:18:00 – themselves there are a few fundamental
44:20:00 – pillars that any business
44:22:00 – survives on you have a value proposition
44:23:00 – there’s a price you sell it at
44:25:00 – and there’s a market you sell it to if
44:27:00 – you have these three things
44:29:00 – in place and you’re 100 confident
44:32:00 – on or you know that that you are you
44:35:00 – have a large market
44:36:00 – that you can sell an exciting offering
44:38:00 – to um you know
44:40:00 – in online of course um
44:43:00 – you you’ve got to get your hands dirty
44:47:00 – um but get
44:50:00 – the right kind of experts um along with
44:53:00 – you at all times
44:54:00 – so you will drastically reduce the time
44:56:00 – you take to solve each
44:58:00 – channel or each source of revenue um
45:01:00 – and that’s really where that’s why
45:03:00 – that’s exactly why convert cut was
45:04:00 – basically
45:05:00 – born um we thought hey you know if you
45:08:00 – spend money on an agency they don’t own
45:10:00 – any technology so that’s definitely
45:12:00 – not working if you go and sign up with
45:14:00 – the tool on your own you know the time
45:15:00 – to use it
45:16:00 – if you hire a team then you don’t know
45:18:00 – how to run that team because you don’t
45:19:00 – know what they’re going to do
45:21:00 – so convert cuts are the best of both
45:22:00 – worlds so we have a team of experts that
45:24:00 – does the optimization and these people
45:26:00 – own the technology so we have our own
45:28:00 – all-in-one conversion and optimization
45:30:00 – tool suite
45:31:00 – and this comes together so the owners of
45:33:00 – the technology are the
45:34:00 – end users and that has a massive impact
45:37:00 – on
45:38:00 – what we’re capable of and i think
45:39:00 – through this conversation it’s fairly
45:40:00 – easy to understand that
45:42:00 – that’s i mean i think we’re doing a fair
45:44:00 – job in my opinion we know our stuff
45:46:00 – um uh so i think i i just see a lot of
45:50:00 – struggle in the
45:51:00 – in the you know e-commerce businesses
45:53:00 – that are in the 500 000
45:54:00 – to 5 million revenue range um from the 5
45:57:00 – million
45:58:00 – onwards it’s it’s pure optimization i
46:00:00 – think anybody who’s at five million
46:01:00 – dollars
46:02:00 – they just need to invest you know a
46:04:00 – hundred thousand dollars a year
46:06:00 – or less on optimization only
46:08:00 – optimization
46:09:00 – nothing more if they just do that um
46:12:00 – they will double in size in a year or
46:14:00 – uh you know at least a year and a half
46:17:00 – max
46:17:00 – uh because they’ve they’ve cracked the
46:19:00 – most fundamental problems
46:21:00 – for anybody smaller than that i i just
46:23:00 – see them struggling with agencies
46:24:00 – leaking a lot of money
46:26:00 – i i’m it’s very unfortunate yeah yeah we
46:29:00 – see that too um so we get really deep
46:31:00 – with our clients to really see like
46:33:00 – you know who they’re working with and
46:34:00 – paid traffic and all those types of
46:35:00 – things and like we do see
46:37:00 – until they find the right agencies they
46:38:00 – just cycle people just cycle through
46:40:00 – agencies
46:41:00 – it’s it’s a little bit rough um for for
46:43:00 – really both of them like you said
46:44:00 – i want to ask you very expensive yes so
46:48:00 – like i i look at that as you know not
46:50:00 – only is it agency expensive right but
46:52:00 – then you’re if you’re talking paid
46:53:00 – traffic like
46:54:00 – it’s not just the agency fee like if you
46:56:00 – spend a hundred thousand dollars on paid
46:57:00 – traffic for the ad budget
46:58:00 – and it doesn’t work very effectively
47:00:00 – then that’s a that’s a problem that’s
47:01:00 – that’s a hard expense
47:02:00 – um so i think there’s there’s a lot to
47:04:00 – consider there i want to ask you here as
47:06:00 – we wrap up
47:07:00 – um you know if people want to continue
47:08:00 – the conversation or or the
47:10:00 – um you know additional resources you’d
47:12:00 – recommend i want you to kind of kind of
47:13:00 – list those here in a second but
47:15:00 – just to kind of recap um some of the
47:18:00 – main things that we covered like what
47:19:00 – i’m really seeing in my notes um
47:21:00 – is uh you know the importance of
47:24:00 – having that data tracking in place so
47:26:00 – one of the things that Shekhar talked
47:28:00 – about is like even if you’re not
47:29:00 – focused on cro right now like make sure
47:31:00 – analytics is set up well make sure
47:33:00 – you’re tracking the events like make
47:34:00 – sure you have everything tracking so
47:35:00 – that as you start to focus on that you
47:37:00 – guys can
47:38:00 – can see that um and see that data um he
47:41:00 – also talked about
47:42:00 – um about uh leveraging search to really
47:45:00 – maximize conversions and
47:47:00 – you know my takeaway from that was
47:48:00 – thinking of search as a funnel
47:50:00 – right like basically somebody sees a
47:52:00 – search box right
47:53:00 – uh somebody engages in the search box
47:55:00 – somebody searches twice in the search
47:57:00 – box somebody bounces in the search box
47:59:00 – somebody converts after the search box
48:00:00 – like the whole thing’s a funnel even
48:01:00 – though it’s just a search box
48:02:00 – like being able to really think of it
48:05:00 – like that and optimize that entire
48:06:00 – process can
48:07:00 – can do really really well um you know we
48:10:00 – also talked about navigation getting the
48:12:00 – navigation side right
48:13:00 – similar methodology as the search box
48:15:00 – side uh product pages for mobile and
48:17:00 – then the other part i think that was
48:18:00 – huge was um
48:20:00 – granular cro like at the channel level
48:22:00 – right so
48:23:00 – um figuring out how do you you know
48:25:00 – optimize for different cohorts of
48:26:00 – visitors um how do you focus in just on
48:28:00 – paid traffic um
48:30:00 – how do you get that lapse point and
48:32:00 – focus on increasing that right
48:34:00 – um or extending that out so a lot of a
48:36:00 – lot of good nuggets um we’re going to
48:38:00 – have a lot in the show notes as well
48:40:00 – um but if people want to continue the
48:42:00 – conversation with you shakar or you know
48:44:00 – dig deeper into some of the stuff you
48:45:00 – talked about
48:46:00 – where can they continue the conversation
48:48:00 – and you know if there’s one big resource
48:49:00 – on your site that would be best for them
48:51:00 – to really dig in deeper on their own
48:52:00 – what would that be so um i mean
48:56:00 – from a conversation perspective we’re
48:57:00 – gonna make it a conversation itself so
48:59:00 – we
48:59:00 – we do these really exhaustive site
49:02:00 – audits
49:02:00 – and we’d be happy to run one of those
49:04:00 – for anybody who’s going through this
49:06:00 – um so you can just go to convertcard.com
49:09:00 – and
49:09:00 – uh you know there’s a free site audit
49:11:00 – button just hit that fill the form we’ll
49:13:00 – be in touch or
49:14:00 – reach out to me um i can probably put my
49:17:00 – email id
49:18:00 – uh you know under wherever we host this
49:20:00 – uh shakecrat
49:21:00 – convertcard.com um as far as content
49:24:00 – goes we’ve actually published a lot of
49:25:00 – very good content so we we are we’re
49:27:00 – gonna be in a couple of days out with
49:29:00 – a bunch of ways to deal with
49:32:00 – the whole new ios update uh and what
49:36:00 – e-commerce companies can do to
49:39:00 – regardless to generate demand uh you
49:41:00 – know even if facebook falls flat
49:43:00 – on his face because we know there’s a
49:44:00 – lot of you know
49:46:00 – demand sitting there for people and uh
49:48:00 – you want to make sure there’s something
49:50:00 – you know that helps them absolutely
49:52:00 – absolutely so we’ll link that up in the
49:54:00 – show notes but for anybody listening um
49:56:00 – the email address is
49:57:00 – shekhar@convertcart.com uh but again
50:03:00 – we’ll put that in the show notes uh you
50:04:00 – can check it out at
50:06:00 – ecommercetownhall.com
50:07:00 – um thanks to everyone for listening i
50:09:00 – hope that you guys find what shakar
50:11:00 – uh shipar dug into is helpful and
50:12:00 – something that you can implement and
50:14:00 – we’d love uh to hear
50:15:00 – what you guys actually implement and how
50:18:00 – it’s going and to kind of get uh deeper
50:20:00 – into uh
50:20:00 – your respective businesses in the
50:22:00 – comments so drop those into
50:24:00 – ecommercetownhall.com
50:26:00 – thank you so much for your insight today
50:28:00 – i really appreciate it
50:29:00 – and i hope you have an awesome week you
50:31:00 – too thank you
50:33:00 – thanks for tuning in to e-commerce town
50:35:00 – hall for more resources related to
50:37:00 – today’s episode
50:38:00 – visit ecommercetownhall.com and don’t
50:42:00 – forget to check out helpflow
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