Will Laurenson | Customers Who Click

Much of the conversation in the marketing world is focused on how to acquire new customers, but Will Laurenson’s focus is on winning the second purchase.

As the founder of Customer Who Click, Will works with e-commerce brands on increasing customer lifetime value through repeat purchases, and he does it through a lens of conversion rate optimization.

While Will’s focus is on e-commerce, the strategies he uses to drive customer loyalty and retention are just as applicable to B2B businesses.

From using customer interviews, surveys and heat mapping tools to gather insights on customer behavior and preferences, to segmenting your customer list, and creating memorable onboarding or unboxing experience, Will shares the techniques he’s used to increase customer second purchases. And he explains the the principles - usability, anxiety, and motivation - that are the foundation of his approach to CRO.

There’s lot’s of good, actionable stuff here for marketers that want to maximize customer lifetime value.

Check out the full episode to hear more.

Resources from this episode:

• Connect with Will on LinkedIn

• Check out the Customers Who Click podcast

Will and Kathleen recording this episode

Kathleen (00:02):

Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And today my guest is Will Laurenson who is the founder of Customers Who Click. Welcome to the podcast Will.

Will (00:26):

Hi, thanks for having me.

Kathleen (00:27):

Yeah, you are a marketing consultant and you do a lot of work with D2C brands really looking at conversion rate optimization and, you know, increasing customer lifetime value and things like that. I'm excited to get into all of this and talk about not just how this applies to D2C brands and e-commerce, but really like what any brand marketer can learn from the things that you're doing on the e-commerce side. Before we do that though, can you just tell my listeners a bit about yourself, your story and what you're doing now?

Will (01:02):

Yeah, sure. So yeah, I, my background was startups originally. So kind of got exposed to a bit of everything in marketing and over like three or four different companies identified the same problem. And it was always that the marketing team has given budgets to go and acquire customers, but the product was never never really optimized. You know, it was never, you know, the product team and development teams had their roadmaps and they just went ahead with that. And despite all our complaints from the marketing side, it was very difficult to get anything optimized, to improve conversion, to improve that customer experience. So I started really focusing on that kind of basically forcing myself onto the product teams and saying, look, you're going to work with me. We've got to fix these things. And then I left my, my last job about two years ago to go out and do this on my own.

Will (01:55):

So now I'm working with brands to improve conversion rates, but always with a focus on that lifetime value and making sure people convert for the right reason, because a lot of businesses go down the route of an ad. It's really easy to go down the route of discounts and incentives and these things that people think their customers want in order to actually make that commitment. But really a lot of the time the customer just doesn't understand the value of that product or piece of software or whatever, and the incentives drive them to the point where they just say, yeah, I'll just give it a try. Like if someone gives you 25% off your first purchase and free shipping and you load this free returns, you kind of think of, well, all right, the worst case this cash is going to be out of my bank for 30 days and then I'll have it back.

Will (02:51):

I don't like the product, so it's not, it's not really the right reason to, to convert because I know I do it right. I, I buy impulse purchases and they sit in the box for about two weeks by the side of my desk. Eventually I open it up and go, actually, I don't really want this. I'll send it back because I was never, never really convinced. And it's obviously worse for subscription businesses where they're really, really relying on that lifetime value piece to actually make that money back. It's, it's very rare to, to kind of break even on that first purchase, especially as, you know, subscription box sets will always be 30, 40, 50% off your first purchase. Very frequently get a free month of digital subscription, whether it's B2C, B2B. So that payback has to happen over maybe even six, the first six months of that person's lifetime. So if they're not fully convinced and if you haven't gotten for the right reason, you're never going to get to like six months.

Kathleen (03:51):

I'm particularly passionate about this topic for a couple of reasons. One is that what I do in my day job is you know, we, I, my company has a SaaS product that helps e-commerce brands prevent coupon extensions from auto injecting discounts at checkout. Especially when they didn't first drive someone to a site. So I spend a lot of time in my day to day thinking about discounts and how they impact lifetime value and like, you know, what role do they really play in driving a sale? And is that the customer you really want? So all of this is stuff that I, that I spend a lot of time on. But then funny enough, the last person I interviewed for this podcast talked a lot about just this trend in the world of going in the direction of performance marketing and discounting and why that's so broken.

Kathleen (04:43):

And he gave the example of a company like Harley Davidson that spends 80% of its marketing budget on customer retention and experience, and only 20% on new customer acquisition acquisition. And that's because they've come to recognize that if you can delight customers and create a great experience like that is its own flywheel. And, you know, that's the, that's the best channel if you will for acquiring new customers. So I feel like this is a perfect storm of things that have led me to talk to you, and I'm really excited to chat about this, but and you also said something that, that leapt out a me because we had a customer recently at clean.io in one of our case studies when they were talking about like, why they wanted to cut down on discounting, talk about the concept of first purchase profitability as a goal. And you, you said something interesting, which is that, you know, for some businesses that's really not possible like subscription boxes, kind of just the way that that works in customer acquisition works there.

Kathleen (05:44):

It's, it's rare to achieve that. I do think it's the holy grail, but recognizing that it's not possible for a lot of brands, at least in the way that they've traditionally marketed, what I think what you're saying and what I'm hearing is that it's so, so vital to get them to come back. And if, if you can get them to come back, that opens up the door to opportunities to then delight them, to create an experience, et cetera, that will keep them with your brand. And then perhaps create that flywheel that, that other guest of mine talked about, where they then begin to recommend your brand to others. So very long way of saying I'm really excited to talk about this.

Will (06:20):

Yeah. And I mean, I'm not saying you can't be profitable on the first purchase, but it is difficult, but also if you are profitable in that first purchase, and let's say you're in kind of a, a reasonably low average order value business, right? So some sort of like, you know, high street fashion sort of business, that sort of thing where maybe the average order values around about a hundred dollars, a hundred pounds, that sort of thing. Like if you've spent $20 to acquire someone, then you've only got $80 left, then you've got your margin on that, on that product as well. So you might be down to, I don't know, $30 that you've made off that purchase. You might've offered to give free shipping. So that's another, you know, it might be $10, five, $10. And obviously you've got all your, your operational expenses. You've got the tools that you've paid for all the software to pay for staff and everything. So when you consider the CPA and that purchase, you might be able to get, you know, five, $10 profit.

Kathleen (07:26):

It wasn't really worth it. Like, does anybody want to build their life around a business? That's a hamster wheel, right.

Will (07:33):

Really that, that second purchase is crucial because that second purchase, if it's identical, let's just say for the purpose of this conversation, you get an identical second purchase. You've immediately got $20 extra profit on that because you've not had to pay for that person again.

Kathleen (07:52):

Well, and I just think, I, like I said, I mean, I used to own a business and I don't think anybody wants to be in business where your customers only come to you once, because then it's just exhausting. You're always in a cycle of trying to find new customers.

Will (08:07):

Exactly. You're always stressing about your, your CPA's going up, you know, how, how Facebook is performing the fact that ads, you know, you do get ad fatigue. So you've got to continually redo your adverts and, and just freshen things up all for the goal of making five, $10 per customer, when really you could be acquiring those customers, getting the second purchase from the, getting a third, fourth, fifth, and each of those purchases is far more profitable. Yeah.

Kathleen (08:39):

That makes sense. All right. So we are all convinced that it's important to get somebody back for that second conversion. When you start working with brands, how do you begin to diagnose what the disconnect is and why people are coming back? Cause I would assume that's your starting point is like what's, what's not working or maybe not.

Will (09:02):

I approach it in the same way that I do with conversion rate optimization. Really it's, it's it's customer interviews, it's finding, out customer interviews, surveys, you know, using some of that Hotjar on the website. Potentially even an email survey and just finding out what people really, really want. Because then you'll find out, you know, if that information is not really there, then you've got your potential in that situation where you're, you're getting people who are buying any way, because they are the people who are, who don't need that persuading. Right. They look at the product and they just go, yeah, I know it's for me. I don't need to see all this other information or whatever. They just know it's the right product and they buy it, then you'll get those, those, those those customers who aren't quite convinced, but you know, maybe it's the only one they found or, or they like the look of it or something like that.

Will (09:53):

And they'll just give it a go. And then obviously you get all the people that don't make the purchase in the first place, as you've got to work out why those people did purchase out of those two groups, what's missing, what information did they want to see? What was their expectation? What are they hoping this product is going to fix? And that's the sort of information that you get on the website to get back to what I was talking about earlier about, you know, fully convincing people that it's the right purchase. And if you do that, then that second purchase becomes a lot easier because people know, so people know how this product's going to affect their lives and the benefit. And they've, they've spent their money in with the feeling that they are convinced that this is the right thing and it's going to help them.

Will (10:40):

So they're going to be more emotionally engaged with it. You know, when that product, they're gonna be excited about that product turning up and they, and they're more likely to use it quicker and get to it. And then, you know, you've got that whole kind of post-purchase experience as well, which you've got to get. Right. one thing I specifically mentioned there about, you know, if people have bought it for the right reason, they're excited about the order, right. They're going to be excited when it turns up. So you've got to make sure they stay excited with a good unboxing experience. And, you know, if we're talking about SaaS, for example, or software that kind of unboxing experiences, their first experience opening up the app or the, or the, or logging into the dashboard, it's got to, you know, they've got to feel excited about using it. They've got to feel that, you know, this is going to benefit their lives. If you just say, here's the product we've done and the next day mother receive is, oh, how would you rate the product? Rate the service then, you know, you're, you're not, you're not doing anything to help that customer experience and kind of nurture them towards the second purchase.

Kathleen (11:45):

So a lot of what you just talked about has to do with looking at your, the customers you're bringing in and figuring out how you can, like what you can do to meaningfully get them back that second time. Do, how often do you find that that part of the problem is just honestly, that that brands are attracting the wrong type of customer because of the way they're doing their marketing. Like, is there a percentage of that customer set that you do your research and you say, we need to write these ones off. They were the wrong ones to begin with.

Will (12:22):

Yeah. Quite often. And there's, there's various ways of, of, of kind of trying to identify these segments. So I've, I've got one client at the moment who opens that up panicking. That's not the right word, but they they've identified this source of traffic, which from an initial view, they think it works really well. Right. They're getting loads and loads of signups, loads of people are creating accounts, but no one's going on to actually make a purchase. So that's where you kind of, you need to identify these segments of customers and then go and investigate them specifically, rather than doing a blanket research and then trying to pick it apart from there. So, you know, my, my gut feeling, so I don't really work on the acquisition side, the advertising side. But my gut feeling is just these just aren't the right people. It's not a, it's not a, a message disconnect, right? It's not, they're being told one thing on the other and they're seeing a slightly different thing on the website that, that makes them go, oh no, actually this isn't what I want. I'm pretty confident. It's just, it's the wrong audience completely.

Kathleen (13:30):

I feel like that's what happened in the US with Groupon where I think so many like, I, for example, when I had my agency I had restaurant customers and their, their thinking was we could do a Groupon and get people in, and then they're going to discover our restaurant and keep coming back. And while I think that, that was probably true. In some cases, I do believe that the majority of customers that came in through Groupons were people who purely were somebody I spoke to recently talked about it as customer promiscuity. Like, they're not the type of customer that's looking for. Repeat business. They're so discount driven, you know, same with like, whether, whether it was a restaurant Groupon or a massage or a hairstyle, or what have you, they're not going to develop a relationship with a provider they're literally like, it's like that drug they're looking for their next fix of their next, very inexpensive opportunity to move on to the next place.

Will (14:28):

Yes. I agree with you to a certain degree. However, you can still make sure you give those people such a good experience that either they come back because they they've used the discount to test out the restaurant and they go, yeah. Okay, cool. Actually, we really like that. We'll come back again or they'll tell people about it. And that's, that's another thing I focus on quite a lot. It's that the value you can drive from a customer that isn't monetary, right. So that is the five-star review. The fact that they're going to tell friends about you you know, ideally use your referral program, but if you don't have one or a lot of people don't, don't even use a referral program, right. If if someone asks me for a recommendation on something, I don't dig through a load of accounts, I don't start logging into accounts and pull out a link for them. I'll just say, yeah, this, this brand. But you can give them such a good experience. I remember reading a book. I think it was who was it? Dan? Is it Dan Abraham? No, what's his name? I can't remember. Sorry. Can't remember the book.

Kathleen (15:37):

You'll remember it in like a minute.

Will (15:40):

I mean, it was a bunch of tips on pricing. And one of the examples he goes into is I think specifically Groupon or just, or coupon people specifically for this restaurant. And he said, this restaurant would lay out. I think it was a different colored napkin on these tables so that the service could identify the, the discount people and make sure they had a fantastic experience.

Kathleen (16:01):

That's so interesting

Will (16:02):

Because it's more likely to bring them back,

Kathleen (16:05):

Although that also sets off red flags in my head, because I'm like, what about the non coupon people? Are they getting a worse experience or?

Will (16:13):

Well, I mean, I suppose you could argue that they're getting a worse experience. They're not getting the best experience, but if someone comes in, if someone finds the restaurant book set is willing to pay full price, as long as your product is good, they should come back. Right. But it's these people who are coming in on discount, who are not that, you know, not that emotionally attached to the, to the to the commitment, you know, they're not they're just thinking, cool, we'll have a cheap dinner if it's, if it's good, it's good. If it's bad. Well, it doesn't really matter. But if you give them a great experience, you've got a better chance of them coming you know, just deciding to book it again.

Kathleen (16:53):

It's one thing to talk about having a great experience. And it's another to like really break it down and, and kind of make it actionable. So when you work with customers, how do you do that? Like, are you thinking there's onboarding there's you talked about unboxing you know, like what are these categories of experience that you look at? Cause you also talked about product design. How do you think about improving experience?

Will (17:24):

Yeah. So on the kind of conversion sites, three areas I look at are usability, anxiety and motivation to get people to convert in the first place and to get them to convert for the right reason. So usability is, can they use the website? Can they find what they're looking for? And can they buy it or can they sign up, create an account, whatever that she does, the website, do the job and do it, do it. Well, anxiety is kind of is this the right product for me? Does it really work? You know, I'm not, I'm not sure about this and you're trying to make people say, okay, I am sure about this. So that's social proof. It might be expert testimonials. Could even be some kind of like almost like quizzes and things like, you know, personality, quizzes and things to say, this is the product for you, you know, based on our product range, because you've given these answers, we recommend you buy this product that makes people feel more, more confident in the decision.

Will (18:25):

And then the motivation is that you just motivated them to buy it. So it might be a, you know, you're missing out on this lifestyle by not making this purchase now, that sort of thing. And all those, if you work on all those that really helps get people through the door in the first place which gives them a great experience. Then I look at that kind of post-purchase or post sign-up experience, which tends to be automated, but it comes across as a very proactive customer service, basically. So every, every customer will get an email saying it's normally. So if it's a physical product, e-commerce, it will be when they've received the product. If it's a SAS business or something, it can be very soon after signup. It can be almost immediate, but it's essentially hi, how's it going? No, you, you should have received this product or, and actually just, you just signed up.

Will (19:21):

Do you need any help? Do you have any questions? Do you have any concerns do you understand what you're doing? Do you need any help advice, give him a few links to manuals or key policies or anything, and just, it's not a sales email anyway, you know, you're not trying to get someone to quickly add a, another product to their order or anything like that or upgrade their account. You're literally just saying, we want to hear from you if you've got any problems, we'll deal with it now. And the benefit of that is obviously if they're a happy customer anyway, you've, they, they appreciate that you reaching out, right? You just appreciate the fact that they've proactively reached out to you to check in. If you're not happy, you've got an opportunity to immediately fix it. This company has reached out to you to check in on you.

Will (20:09):

You can fix that problem straight away. And the kind of benefit of that is if you fix those problems, you're not going to get bad reviews. You can get good reviews, better reviews. And it's, you know, I've, I've seen it very often where what is probably likely to be a one-star review has suddenly become a five-star review because you've fixed the problem. And sometimes it's not even, it's not even the world's coming to an end sort of disaster problem for the customer. It's just something that they don't understand that they're not happy with. And it could be super simple fix for you, but they will then go and leave a five-star review when that review comes in re review request comes in about two weeks later.

Kathleen (20:51):

Yeah, I think that's really interesting. I think so many businesses are so afraid of problems happening or, you know, and I think the same principle holds true with even poor reviews. Sometimes you can turn a poor review around by how you respond to it. It's all in the response. And I've seen a lot of data that says, like, people don't expect businesses to be perfect. In fact, if they seem too perfect, it makes the buyer suspicious. It's, it's like the fallibility and how a brand acknowledges it and responds to it that I think humanizes the brand to people makes it more relatable, makes the customer feel like there's a relationship there and it in genders that feeling of appreciation or at least that's how I've, I've kind of perceived it.

Will (21:37):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean the best way to do these emails are like, hi, it's Will from company, just wanted to check in on you to see if you've got any questions that sort of really, really personal approach make it seem like it's actually come from us from a, an individual. And I mean, I, I don't know. It's difficult for me to say to him because I'm too close to it, but I would expect people to know that it's automated. But actually I do think the vast majority of people don't realize that still.

Kathleen (22:07):

And I also think so I've done this at my company. There are ways of addressing that. And, and so I have some automated emails, like when people subscribe to our newsletter that go out and in response to thank them and to let them know about their unsubscribe options. And I, I have, I've included lines like while this is an automated email, I'm a real person. And I look at every response, you know, things like that, that, because, because the customer isn't stupid and they, they do know like many of them do know they're automated. They can look and see that there's a footer with a CAN-SPAM, you know, information.

Will (22:41):

It depends. It depends on the industry. Right? I think B2B yes. Much more knowledge about the automation. I think B2C people still don't know. I think the vast majority of the public still don't actually know that it's automated and just having CAN SPAM and stuff in there. I don't think that's a signal to people that it's, that it's an automated.

Kathleen (23:02):

That's so interesting. That's definitely then I think a key difference between B2B and B2C B2B audiences. That's something that you can do. You can put that kind of a line in and just acknowledge it. And I think people appreciate that and it makes them feel like, oh, okay. So if I do hit reply, somebody is going to be there, actually reading what I say.

Kathleen (23:23):

So you talked about working with product teams and I'd love to dig into that a little bit more because I, I feel like that could go one of two ways, you know, you could go to your product team and say, you're going to work with me and they could really push back. But I agree with you that there's a huge opportunity from, for marketers to work more closely with product teams, to think more deeply about how the effectively, what is called product led growth. Like how do you get the product itself to be the engine of your growth? And so how have you found is the best way to, to build and manage that relationship with product?

Will (24:03):

You've, you've got to, you've definitely got to work with them, right? You can't. I know I said, I basically forced myself on the product team, but I did it by speaking to them, asking the questions, asking them questions giving, giving feedback on the product and doing it in a way which, you know, took a little bit of time, you know, but when I did start to actually work with them, it was really easy because they knew me. And it meant that when I did start actually getting involved in projects with them there, it was almost as if I'd been working with them anyway. So, you know, if there's no relationship between marketing and product, you've got to start working on it, start developing it. And obviously just build a case for everything, right? The worst thing you can do, and it happens in marketing, it happens all over the place. The worst thing you can do is come into a meeting and say, we need to do this because I think it's the right thing to do.

Kathleen (25:00):

Yeah. Especially with people who tend to have more of like an engineering background or they're very data driven.

Will (25:07):

Yeah. I mean, so one thing I've learned from, from developer friends actually is the five whys, right? So when someone says, I think we should do this, it's why, and they'll answer that why, and then you say, okay, why? And then eventually you do it five times. And then the fifth one is generally where you get to the actual answer of why they think they should you should make that change. And a lot of the time it's just because they've, they've got an opinion on it and they think they should do it that way. If they've actually got data and, and insights to back that back that decision, they will easily answer that within those five lights.

Kathleen (25:49):

So are you talking about product usage data? Like, and if so, how are you getting that?

Will (25:56):

Yeah. I mean, at any day through it obviously depends on what your, what you're trying to do. But yeah, if you're suggesting a change to let's say sign up form and you're arguing that you should split the sign up form in to something like that or remove some fields. You know, you obviously haven't got much data. You can use yourself apart from saying our conversion rate to the, on the form is too like, so, you know, I think it's perfectly acceptable to go off and just find that find that information elsewhere. I mean, ideally you'd test it, right. You you'd run an AB test and just prove that splitting the form into two works better or removing some fields works better. But sometimes it can be difficult, right? If those, if those fields on the form are compulsory fields, then you can't just hide the field with an AB test tool because then your form won't submit because it's expecting that piece of information.

Will (26:57):

Although you can, I think you can fake it at times. You can, you know enter default texts or something. But you just got to bring, bring results, bring research resources, you know, say, look, it's I've really hated some best practice, but it's kind of best practice that your forms that are too long don't get filled in. But you can take the same number of fields in a form, split it into two forms and you should get a better conversion rate. So it's just it's, it's just about, you know, trying to find some sort of data to back your, your thinking and then have a discussion about it. You know, if you're unlucky, you'll get a product person who has that opinion basically and says, no, we're not going to do that. Cause I don't think it's right.

Will (27:46):

Yeah. And, and that gets really, really tough because they're blocking it. Right. It's, it's, it's a very, it's a very different if you're the marketer saying, I think we should do this because I think it's the right thing to do. And it's easy for them to say no. Can you, can you back your decision, it's much more difficult for you to then get them to to reason why they think no, because they just thinking, well, no, I don't have the reason that I can just say no way. But like I said, you've got to build those relationships and if you do that, it gets a lot easier to work with people.

Kathleen (28:22):

So I love all of this information and I think it's, it's interesting how you think about this problem, what I would like to do, because I think it can be difficult still for a listener to, to like think through how they might apply this to themselves is I'd love to, to try to maybe surface some examples of companies that you've worked with and you don't have to name them if they need to stay anonymous, but where you've come in and there's been an issue with second conversions and like it, can you share some concrete stories around, like, what did you work with them to change that, that had that desired outcome that you're talking about?

Will (29:04):

Yeah. So so the thing I mean there's loads of different ways to look at it. You know, I worked for digital magazine subscription, so almost like a Netflix sort of model Netflix or Spotify model. And we actually ended up going down the route of saying we're better off with a 14 day free trial without credit card upfront. Because the data showed. And unfortunately we had the ability to test this because the way, the way the whole system been built was people could only, almost only sign up through a landing page anyway. And we had the ability to test out these offers in the landing page. But then that's still a, that offer only applies to that landing page for that, that audience. Right? So it was easier to test that, run the numbers, get loads of people through that funnel.

Will (30:05):

Look at the drop-off at the end of free trial, look at how many people then put their credit cards in and assess that data over about three months and then come back to the product team and say, you know, we've tested 7, 14, 30 day trials. We've tested them all with them without credit cards, but we can say that 14 day with without credit card is the best option for us and gets us the most number of the biggest number of customers. So go and implement this as a full-time thing so that we can test something else and we don't have to focus our efforts on, on that offer.

Kathleen (30:41):

And what kind of an impact did that have? Like what did, what did that do materially in terms of conversion rates or like,

Will (30:48):

I think if I remember correctly, I believe we got about double the customers. Wow. From the, from the non-credit card side sorry. Double the customers after about three months, that's still right. So, yeah. So you, obviously, when you look at it initially, and I think this is a problem, a lot of marketers make you know, with a subscription, for example, if that credit card is in place that subscription will roll over at the end of the trial and for a lot of people that happens. I know I've got the numbers somewhere. I'm pretty sure it's something like 80% of people paid for a first month, if something ridiculous, definitely highlight that. But the churn on that first month was massive as well. Loads of people dropped off and then people would drop off after the second month as well, because either they've missed that first month or they just decided actually, no, it's not for me.

Will (31:48):

Whereas when you're asking people for their credit card afterwards, everyone who then signs up is committed. They've had the trial, they know they want the product. And so they're much more likely to stay with you. And so what we found was by looking at the, looking at the data three months after the first purchase, that's where we can make the decision and say, yeah, we're much better off because without the credit card in first place, you know, it might take some emails and things. It takes a bit of effort to get these people in, but you, you acquire these people into paying subscribers and then they stick with you. Whereas on the credit card, first side, it was just more and more drop off every month. And then yeah, after about three months we have more people on the more people converted on the, on the numb, the non credit card side. So it's, it's stuff like that where it's not, it's not necessarily sending emails to people and saying, oh, come back and buy it, buy a second product. It's, it's a lot to do with that. The initial experience they've had and how you treat them initially, that then gets them to, to convert for the first time and the second time. Yeah.

Kathleen (33:02):

So it sounds like it's very much about having a culture of testing and kind of constantly doing small experiments to challenge conventional thinking, if you will, and see if it can have an impact on your conversion rates, on your return purchase behavior on lifetime value. And, and I imagine that that has implications for like how you run your team and who you have on it and the tools you use is that right?

Will (33:36):

Yeah. I mean, first thing I'd say is it's not little experiments. That's another mistake a lot of people make. If you're not, not really thinking, you know, obviously you don't want to think too big, but you've got to be thinking this experiments gotta make a big impact. And why is it going to make a big impact because you know, in that previous example, because for these people, we're not asking them for a credit card. Yeah. Therefore we should get a much higher signup rate in the first place, but then you've also got to look at, you know, you get that much higher signup rate. Some people would say, cool, we're done. We, you know, it was a winning test, but if you don't assess the data over that slightly longer period of time you might be wrong. But yeah, I mean to experiment properly, you need you've got to have like a strategist and analyst, a designer and developer and an AB testing tool.

Will (34:30):

A lot of the tools we'll have kind of drag and drop editor. They're not great. They're a bit, you know, they can be a bit clunky that can be easy to make mistakes with. So it's, it's always best to get a developer just to go in and, and make the code changes within the, within the platform. And that it's just about having the right testing process in place. So how do identify the processes, you know, coming up with a scoring model and prioritization model for testing but then also once you run the test, firstly running it for a long enough period of time. So you're absolutely certain, the result is the result and not cutting it short. But then would you do with that end result? You know, if it's a winning test, it's not a case of cool implement that and move on to the next thing, because there might be an opportunity to get more out of it instead of moving on and likewise with a losing test, it doesn't mean call that was wrong, throw it away. It means the only, you know, you should only run a test because you've done the research, you've done the analysis and you've come up with this hypothesis. So if it's a losing test, you should be thinking, why did that lose? Where did we go wrong?

Kathleen (35:44):

Ask the question? Why? Yeah.

Will (35:47):

But how did we get this assumption wrong? And that might mean getting some feedback from customers. You might even be able to look at it and go, actually, I think, I think this is why why it's gone wrong. Why don't we test this instead? You might even have two or three ideas, but if your, if your traffic's not if you haven't got enough traffic, you might run one test. If it doesn't work, you just, you run it again when the next variant, but there's always that iteration stage of, you know, why did this, why did it go, right? Why did it go wrong? How do we make it better?

Kathleen (36:22):

And you talked about the need for bigger experiments. And you gave the example of splitting the form into two and, or not asking for a credit card upfront. Are there other kind of common wins that you've seen that, that, like, I imagine you have a few things in your arsenal where you're like, oh, I've seen this work time and time again. It's, it's a good one. It's a low hanging fruit. Are there any other examples like that, that you can share?

Will (36:54):

It's difficult with specific examples because so many businesses are different, but even, even to fashion websites, they've got different audiences. They've got their own different messaging. So introducing something, you know, even a, like a free shipping message, right. If you use the wrong wording to explain it, it works one on one site and it all right. It probably works. It probably work on the other site, but it might not work as well, but I would always focus on what I mentioned earlier. Right. So usability. So is this making the website easier to use is it dealing with people's anxiety about the website? So do we have reviews in view both for the product and for the website? Do we have a SSL certificate? Do we have you know, is it clear that these are secure payments? Do we have a verified payment providers?

Will (37:50):

And then that motivation piece, you know making sure people feel excited about the product. So one thing, all right. One thing that does work well is, you know, with, with things like fashion and lifestyle products, products that people, sorry, images of people using the product generally works better. And a lot of the time when they're smiling, that looks better as well as people want to. People want to think that, you know, that person's happy because they're using that product. So things like that do work. What else was I going to say? How did some other examples as well? And then there's a few other things I using scoring. So are you adding or removing something from the website from the page? Because that is just, it's just so much more obvious as part of the test, right? If you're, if you make a tweak to some copy, you know, it's like helping an impact, is that really gonna make, have we done enough there, but if there's, if there's something doesn't exist on the page and you add it, then you know, people are gonna notice it. And it's, you should, should see a bigger impact from that. And same goes removing something. I removed an, a notification on a, on a product page, which just said in stock, and it was right in the middle of the product page underneath the underneath description above size. And it was just in that space and removing it, improve conversion rate on mobile by about 20%.

Kathleen (39:17):

Wow. That's crazy.

Will (39:19):

Yeah, I mean, it was massive. I wasn't expecting that bigger and improvement, but you know, when I thought about it, I was like, well, actually there's no reason that that, that notification doesn't provide any information to anyone because you'd expect the product to be in stock.

Kathleen (39:35):

I was going to say, it's more than negative. It's only if it's not in stock.

Will (39:39):

But then you have a whole different experience anyway, for our sort of stuff. But also on mobile and this is why it affected my bot more. It was pushing the call to action below the fold. So by removing it, that that add to cart suddenly became visible. So that's why, yeah, so that worked really well above the fold scores higher, you know, if the change you're making is immediately visible that's a bigger impact. And then obviously, you know, have you identified it through testing? Sorry, not testing through big search, just Google analytics, tell you to do this, do heat map to tell you to do it, have customers told you to do it, that sort of thing. If you're answering yes to those, then you know, you're going to score higher on the, on the test and, and you can go ahead with it.

Kathleen (40:29):

That makes sense. I want to make sure we, we squeeze in the answers to two questions. I always ask my guests before we run out of time. So we're going to shift gears for a minute here. The first one is most of the marketers, I talk to say that a big pain point for them is just to stay on top of everything that's changing in the world of marketing platform, changes, regulatory changes, technology changes. How do you personally do that? Do you have certain sources you rely on to stay educated?

Will (40:59):

I'm quite big on LinkedIn. I find it really useful if you, if you follow the right people you know, you don't get huge amounts of detail on there at times, but sometimes that doesn't matter. Sometimes you just need you know, I'm, I'm not necessarily looking for here's five steps to do this change on this website or whatever. I'm more looking for ways of thinking about how to approach it. Yeah. That that's how I want to improve. It's improve. It's. How can I think about conversion optimization differently to try and unlock a huge amount of, of opportunity rather than just, you know, here's one test, we ran, it worked. Why don't you go test it? So Lyft is really good for that, but then I also do have a massive inbox full of newsletters.

Kathleen (41:50):

But what are some of your favorites?

Will (41:54):

I'm going to have to open them up actually, because I do feel, I feel a little bit bad because I can't really name them off the top of my head because I, I let you just open the first one. Read it, delete, move on to the next one. And I'm just focusing on the content. Right. So actually I would struggle to name them over. Look at my book, say DTC newsletter is really good. John McDonald's from the good is good for conversion optimization. Eric Barker's one is good. He's just launched a book barking up the wrong tree.

Kathleen (42:36):

Oh, I like the name.

Will (42:38):

It's quite a good name. Let me see if I can pick out a couple of others. Definitely some more. Rishi Rawat. I would definitely recommend his. So R I S H I R A W A T. He is the founder of frictionless commerce. So I, I definitely go check his out. He's got a very interesting way of thinking about how to approach and he's very, very copy focused.

Kathleen (43:18):

Those sound like some good ones. I love it. And a few there that I had not heard of. So I'm excited to go check them out. And then related question well, somewhat related, you know, obviously this podcast is all about inbound marketing, which I just define as anything that naturally attracts the right buyer to your business. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer today?

Will (43:44):

Yeah. Jason Varner is the founder of SHFT marketing, which is SHFT I think yeah, he's, he's really, really good at, it focuses on B2B mainly. But he's all about your brand and content marketing, basically how to get your positioning, right. How to get your offer, right. And how to put it into your content in a way, which doesn't just scream. This is what I do. This is how I can help you, but allows you to provide value to people, but in a way, which kind of clearly says, this is what I do is get to how I can help you. So I definitely recommend his newsletter and following him on LinkedIn.

Kathleen (44:28):

It's like a good one. I love it. All right. Last question. If somebody is listening and they want to learn more about you or what you do, or they have a question and would just like to connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that

Will (44:41):

Best way is definitely LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on there. I post a lot of content on there. And I'll, I'll see any messages. I also have the customers who click podcast. So people go check that out. It's all about it's mainly, it is mainly DTC marketing, but a lot of the principles work for any business. Anyway I wouldn't recommend my website at the moment. Website needs a bit of overhaul, so yeah, definitely LinkedIn is the best place.

Kathleen (45:09):

Great. All right. I'll put that link in the show notes. So head there, if you want to connect with will and in the meantime, if you're listening and you enjoyed this, you could also have the apple podcasts and leave the podcast a review. And if you know someone else doing amazing inbound marketing work, send me a tweet at work, mommy work, and I'd love to have them as my next guest. That's it for this week. Thanks so much for joining me. Will, this was a lot of fun.

Will (45:33):

Cool. Thanks for having me.