Drive and Convert (Ep. 024): Laws of Conversion (Part One)

Today, is the first in a two part series about the first four principles of the world of Conversion Rate Optimization.

Listen to this episode:

About This Episode:

Today, is the first in a two part series about the first four principles of the world of Conversion Rate Optimization. What are these fundamental truths, and how can I break down optimization from a high level to not focus so much on the tactics? Everybody goes directly to the tactics, but what are the overarching things that a brand needs to know and be thinking about? Today, Jon breaks it all down.

Subscribe To The Show:

Episode Transcript:

Ryan:
Jon, you and I have done a lot of speaking around the country over the years. Every time we’re on stage speaking, I notice some very common trends. Regardless of the clients we are speaking to or the prospects we’re speaking to or the verticals or industries, there seems to pretty regularly come up some very consistent topics in your talks. That leads me to believe that there are some underlying principles in the world of conversion and optimization, that if you understand at least those, it allows you to build some tactics or things to do specifically to your site that are going to work better. Since I know that not every tactic for conversion rate optimization is going to work across every website. Some of them will.

Ryan:
Helping each business owner or marketing team understand how they at least need to start looking at the world from a conversion rate perspective, I think requires people to understand some of these principles. So I’m very excited today. Again, every time you talk, I’m learning something new, and I enjoy it because I usually have to go do it on my website. Doing a podcast with you allows me to improve my websites which is great.

Jon:
I’ll look out for that royalty check.

Ryan:
Do so. It’s in the mail, I’m sure.

Ryan:
Today, let’s start. I believe we’re going to do two parts on this because there’s so much depth you can go into when talking principles. Today we’re going to touch, I believe, on the first four principles of conversion rates. Not even just necessarily the optimization, but just, you got to establish a foundation of how to get a website to convert before you can then optimize it. I’m excited. Kick us off on this.

Jon:
Awesome.

Jon:
Well, look, as you mentioned, you’ve seen me talk quite a bit. Maybe this year of COVID that we’ve been in has been a good thing for you because you’ve gotten some distance from hearing my talks over and over again. I’ll come up with some new tricks next time we speak together.

Jon:
In this decade-plus or so of experience, I’ve seen these time and again, that you must follow these certain truths, if you will, for a highly converting site. This year as I haven’t been traveling as much, I’ve had a little bit of time on my hands, as we all have. Maybe less so than you with all the kids in land, but I will say that I started writing a book about this.

Ryan:
Wow.

Jon:
I really wanted to focus on just, what are these fundamental truths, and how can I break down optimization from a high level to not focus so much on the tactics? Everybody goes directly to the tactics, but what are the overarching things that a brand needs to know and be thinking about? What is the frame of mind that they need to have?

Jon:
Let’s chat about the first handful of them. I’m hoping this book will be out in the first half of 2021. Well, I’m sure we’ll let everybody know about it when we get closer on that. But the first law that I talk about here, is that it’s really hard to read the label from inside the jar.

Jon:
Now, I know this is one you’ve heard from me before, right?

Ryan:
For sure.

Jon:
I could summarize this just by saying that all too often, brands make decisions about their Ecommerce website based on what they think is best, not how a consumer who’s new to the brand and their products engages with that site. I think that’s a fundamental mistake and that’s why I start here. You have to be able to understand that as a brand, you’re just too close to your website, and really need to be thinking about how that new to file customer is viewing the site in order to make it successful.

Ryan:
I think often it’s not even the website as much as it’s, you understand the lingo and you’re the one writing this content on the site. You know the industry or brand so well, that you don’t even think about, they don’t know to click on that. They don’t because they didn’t build it. They didn’t know that they should look there before here, before clicking and scrolling down or doing something. That’s a difficult one for brands to grasp, for sure.

Jon:
It’s a classic. There’s that wonderful site out there called, The User is Drunk, where you can pay this guy to basically get drunk and then navigate your website.

Ryan:
I have not heard of that. I am taking that note right now.

Jon:
Look that one up.

Ryan:
I will.

Jon:
He has another site that he runs too, which is, My Mom is the User, I think. That’s even better because it’s his older mom. She’s probably in her 70s, late 70s. She gets on and tries to use your website and they record it.

Jon:
Both of them are very eye-opening. If a drunk user can’t use your website, then you have problems.

Ryan:
Especially in COVID.

Jon:
We were just talking about wine before, right?

Ryan:
We were. Got to be drinking wine at night in COVID. Relax, de-stress.

Jon:
We were discussing what our daily drinkers were, which is probably not overly healthy.

Jon:
Again, I think that this perspective is really important. Not only understanding that consumer, but it’s impossible for a brand to optimize their own site when they don’t have this perspective from that new visitor.

Jon:
Additionally, if a visitor can’t understand the brand’s website, how to navigate it, what the value propositions are or even what the products the brands are selling, then they’re going to bounce right away. I think that could be solved.

Ryan:
When you’re trying to see things from outside the jar, I don’t want to get into tactics too much, but how does a team understand if that’s where they’re at, other than going to the drunk user site and being like, “I never thought about that”? Are there just general things that a team seems to sound like or look like when you come in, like, “Ugh, you’re in the jar”?

Jon:
Yeah. It’s really easy to look at somebody’s website and determine this. The first way is, as you mentioned, jargon. They’re using a lot of jargon that they know but their consumers may not know. This could just be the name of their product categories. It could be the product names themselves. A lot of brands do this and they think that they’re speaking to their audience. Really, they’re limiting their audience by doing that.

Jon:
I’m not suggesting, don’t play to the niche that you serve. You definitely should. You want them to know that you understand their pain. This is where if you really start doing some consumer research. Start doing those session recordings so you can understand where people are dropping off and where they’re navigating around a website, or even the best of these is going to be user testing. I think we’ve talked a few times about, just, when it’s okay to do so again. Just go to your local coffee shop with a laptop and just say, while somebody’s waiting in line, “Can I buy this coffee for you if you spend two minutes, while you’re waiting for the barista to make your coffee, and navigate my website while I record the screen?” Pretty simple.

Jon:
You just want to know, what does that person who’s never been to your website before, what are they thinking as they come to your website? What’s their first impression? Where do they want to go first? If you use that data to understand your visitors and you optimize for their experience instead of the brand’s message, then you’re going to be in a really good spot.

Jon:
This is something that really, I’ve seen can help brands to navigate uncertainties like COVID, and I think it’s really worked well.

Ryan:
Great.

Jon:
Next law. You ready?

Ryan:
I’m ready.

Jon:
Consumers are at your website for two reasons. To research and to purchase.

Jon:
Now, this is another one I know you’ve heard. You’ve probably heard all these laws because you’ve heard me speak so many times, right?

Ryan:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jon:
That’s why there are laws, because they keep coming back up. Fundamental truths. If consumers are only at your website for two reasons and that’s, again, to research and to purchase, I think that you’ll find really quickly with putting that lens on Ecommerce websites, that most of them are set up to accomplish way too many tasks, right?

Ryan:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jon:
Think about all these tasks that websites usually try to accomplish right off the bat. A lot of times they’re trying to talk to the company’s mission. Consumer, they might care about mission, but later on in that process. It might be a reassurance tool. It’s probably not the reason somebody is going to buy from you. Again, that consumer has their own pain or need that they’re trying to find the solution for. If your mission aligns and helps out with that, maybe that’s a reassurance, but it’s unlikely that somebody’s going to buy from you unless there’s … that’s not going to be the deciding point.

Jon:
A lot of websites, they just want to promote their latest marketing campaign. They’ll say, “We’re going to run this big marketing campaign. We got to have it up on our website.” And it’s like, well, do you? You’ve heard me tell the story, I worked with a well-known helmet brand. They wanted to do a heli-skiing commercial. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars doing this photo shoot and filming an event where they dropped these skiers out of a helicopter on the side of a mountain. It looked beautiful. But guess what? 99.9% of their consumers and their visitors just needed a helmet for that weekend trip to Tahoe. They weren’t trying to buy a helmet to heli-ski so it didn’t resonate with them. Was it cool on TV and get attention? Yes, of course. But once they’re on the website, your marketing has one. There’s no reason to continue to beat that point there. Marketing campaign content is great in a supporting fashion, but it’s really not that great upfront on the website.

Jon:
These sites also try to just provide a ton of product information. This is my favorite. Brands often, their websites try to feed the ego of the executive stakeholders. I see this all the time. They have an about us page, they have, what’s our company mission, as I mentioned earlier. Their navigation is all about the company instead of it being about the consumer’s needs. That’s something that we see quite a bit. Eventually, selling products makes its way onto that list, although it’s much, much lower than one would think. Again, visitors are really only at that website to research and understand if your product or service can solve their pain or need. If it can, they want to purchase or convert as quickly and easily as possible. And that’s it. I promise you, that’s it. No, one’s there to hang out.

Ryan:
Or spin the little Wheel of Fortune wheel and try to win a discount.

Jon:
You know how to get me riled up.

Ryan:
I just love going to sites and spinning wheels. That’s great.

Jon:
The best one was, I was in a customer meeting, and I won’t name who it was. I was in a client meeting years ago now and they asked us to put a MP3 player of music. Literally, they called it an MP3 player back then, a music player on their site. And I was like, “Why? You don’t sell music.” And they said, “Well, we want people to hang out.” I was like, “Why do you want them to hang out on your website?” “We’re a cool brand. We want people to hang out and then associate us with a cool brand.” I was like, “If people are on your website for more than four or five minutes, you’ve lost.” That means they’re having problems completing the tasks that they want to get done. Your site has jobs to be done. If it’s not meeting that consumer’s jobs to be done, then you’ve got a problem. I guarantee you, they’re not coming to your website to listen to music. That’s just not why they’re there.

Ryan:
You go to your MySpace page, “Ooh, they got cool music. Let’s hang out here.”

Jon:
That’s what it felt like.

Ryan:
That didn’t last.

Jon:
Really, I think, here’s the thing. If you’re accomplishing those two tasks, research and purchase, and you’re making those as simple as possible that your customers will buy, conversion rate will improve, customer satisfaction will improve, and everybody’s going to win. There’s really no downside to focusing on those two tasks other than maybe upsetting somebody in the marketing team or executive leadership. And I bet that that could be turned around with some higher sales numbers.

Ryan:
I think on this, a sub point would be, make sure you’re also worrying about the right metrics. If you are generating research, a high bounce rate is not a bad idea. Don’t get hung up on, bounce rate went up to 90%. Who cares? The page you’re sending them to, they didn’t know to go anywhere else.

Jon:
That’s a really good point. A lot of brands focus on metrics like time on page. They focus on things like bounce rate, et cetera, in thinking that they’re going to have a much higher Google ranking because they solve those metrics. The reality is that if a consumer who’s not really going to buy from you bounces, that’s okay. But also, if a consumer can get into your site and buy and leave in three, four minutes, that’s okay too. I want to get on with my life just like a lot of your consumers do. They’re there for the purpose, and if it’s served, then we’re good to go.

Announcer:
You’re listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast focused on Ecommerce growth. Your hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate optimization agency that works with Ecommerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers, and Ryan Garrow of Logical Position, a digital marketing agency offering pay-per-click management, search engine optimization, and website design services to brands of all sizes.

Announcer:
If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you.

Ryan:
Okay. Third law.

Jon:
Your goals and your consumer’s goals are aligned. They both want a conversion. Going back to what we just talked about, was that they’re only there for two reasons. The second one of those was to convert. That’s what a brand wants too.

Jon:
Really, I think the overarching point here is, is that when it comes to your website, if your goals and your consumer’s goals are aligned and you both want a conversion, then you’re really going to be in a good spot. The best way to combat this one is to think of your website like a retail store, which is another thing I know you’ve heard me say. Again, that’s why these are all laws. They’re just common truths that come up again and again.

Jon:
You’ve heard me talk a lot about, if you wouldn’t do it in a retail store, don’t do it on your website. I think that’s super applicable here. Just because you can’t see that consumer on the other side of the screen does not mean they’re not human. So many brands make that mistake. They just think of it as a number in Google analytics and they treat it like, how can we get them through the funnel as quickly as possible? Reducing your user experience to a number in Google analytics is just not a good situation for helping you increase sales.

Jon:
Good examples of this is, I talk about the retail associate who jumps out in front of you as soon as you step in the front door of the store and you are bombarded with a pop-up, essentially, where they jump out in front of you and say, “Give me your email address and I’ll give you a discount.” Well, it’s the same thing. Would you really want that experience in a retail store? Probably not. Would you rotate your products automatically from side to side on the rack, making it difficult to grab one? No. People do that with rotating carousels.

Ryan:
They do.

Jon:
Why do that? Even worse is when the call to action on those images moves the location. Now the consumer is jumping all around, they have to grab in different locations, right?

Ryan:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jon:
It’s really painful.

Jon:
What about this one? I love this one. What if every time you put an item in your cart, you rushed them to the cashier? Imagine you go grocery shopping and you put one item in your cart, and all of a sudden your cart pulls you to the checkout. You’re not ready to go to checkout. That’s exactly what a lot of Ecomm brands do, is they say, add to cart, and then it immediately takes you to the cart instead of just adding it to the cart and letting you continue your shopping journey. It’s a great way to reduce your average order value, by the way, is to just kick people right into the cart and say, “You’re done here now,” when you really want them to continue to explore a little bit.

Ryan:
On that point, I will bring up, there’s a new technology that I’ve seen on product pages allowing for checkout from single button checkout from product pages. Shopping drives a lot of product page visits, they’re going to, or they are, putting checkout buttons on the product pages. Land there, click done, gone, gone. I was like, that has to be killing AOV.

Ryan:
That’s how you build, is you have larger things added to cart or multiple items. I haven’t seen the final data yet but they told me that AOV went up on one of the beauty brands. And I was like, “Well, that doesn’t pass my logic test to a degree.” You can give people options, I think. But if you’re going to be like, click, gone, I agree with that, that is … I can’t imagine what that’s going to do to some of those numbers.

Jon:
You can combine that tactic with something like CartHook. I don’t know if you’re familiar with CartHook, but that post-purchase upsell. Post-purchase upsell right there would go a long way. That’s something that is worth considering as well is, if you have to send people to the cart after they add something, then let them check out and upsell them after they check out. It’s a really seamless process and it increases average order value dramatically.

Jon:
The fourth one is, competitive research is not data. How many brands do you know just copy their competitors?

Ryan:
I get this all the time in the paid search realm and just in the online marketing realm. It’s like, “Oh, we saw brand so-and-so was doing this, so we’d like to do that.” I’m like, “You assume that your competitors know what they’re doing.” I would argue more than nine out of 10 do not know what they’re doing.

Jon:
It’s interesting. We just say, “That company is bigger than us. They probably know.” Or I assume they’re bigger than us and they know.

Jon:
It’s funny, I saw something today on LinkedIn where somebody was like, “The more of my idols that I meet in person, the more I realize they’re just normal people.” It’s so true. Maybe they had a lucky break or maybe they work really hard, but that doesn’t necessarily mean whatever their path was needs to be your path.

Jon:
Another good way to look at this is that there’s a reason that racehorses wear blinders. If you think about that, a racehorse needs to focus on the goal and just sprint into that goal. If they see all these distractions around them, then they’re going to slow down or they’re going to hit the horse next to them or they’re going to go off course. Do you really want to be the racehorse that is chasing all the other horses? Or do you want to be the one that’s just sprinting to your goal?

Jon:
I think that applies really, really well. These competitors, you’re assuming that they’re running a winning race. You really don’t know. You don’t know if they’re running a test on their site and you got opted into a variant of that test, and then you just said, “Wow, they’re doing this to everybody. This is great. It must be working for them.” Well, maybe they tested it with 5% of their traffic and you happened to be in that 5%. You also don’t know if their tactics are even working. So many brands say things like you just said, “Brand X, Y, or Z is doing this, we need to do it too.” But how do you know that that’s actually working for them? It could be a mix of a bunch of different things.

Jon:
I guess the only thing that really matters here is your site’s visitors data. That’s really, how are people engaging with your site? Now, competitive analysis can fuel a smart testing program, but you really just don’t want to copy blindly. I think if you see something you like from somebody else, test it. Why not? It can’t hurt to run a test on your site for a small variant of your traffic and run with it. But I think it’s important to know that not one strategy is going to work across all the same sites and even with the same brands in, excuse me, with brands in the same category.

Ryan:
I use it as brainstorming fodder when I’m talking to clients like, “Okay. Great they’re doing that. If you haven’t tested that, based on what I’m seeing, it’s probably worth a reasonable test.” But that assumption that it’s working is insane. Even if you and I set up, if we were selling the same product, we both built our sites, we could bid on the same term and have drastically different results on this. And it could work for me and not for you, but then the same is going to happen on other keywords or other traffic sources. That’s because you’re bidding on it doesn’t mean it’s going to work for me.

Jon:
I think this is true across several disciplines. It’s true for driving traffic. It’s true once somebody gets to your site. I think it’s just true in life that if you are always focusing on other folks instead of your own goals, you’ll never reach your own goals.

Jon:
This is a good one, if you really want to innovate, you can’t be copying all the time. I think that that’s key, is be looking to innovate and you’ll do something a little different and your site will perform a lot better than if you’re just going around copying your competition.

Ryan:
I would even challenge a lot of brands to start thinking about, instead of looking at bigger competitors, look at smaller ones that seem to be starting quickly or growing quickly. I’ve done that on Amazon with some of my competitors. I already know the big competitors. I know exactly how they got to where they are, how many years it took. It’s the smallest, “Whoa, where’d that brand come from? What are they doing that’s so unique?” I need to trace that back and focus on, how do I stay ahead of them? But also, usually the smaller brands have less layers or management opinions to work through, and they can just do.

Ryan:
That’s one thing I really do love about the startup process from my own companies is, I see, I do, I test. I’m like, “Bad idea. Pivot quickly.” Some of the largest brands we’ve worked with, good luck getting certain things done even if they make sense, because there’s all these layers of management saying, “We need to do this, this and this, just because we have to for this random retailer,” or, “This random thing for branding over here, we have to put that on the site.”

Jon:
That’s exactly it. Look at the new startup because they’re going to innovate, right?

Ryan:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jon:
They’re still fresh. They’re going to innovate. Turning that small little ship is a lot easier than turning that huge battleship. Trying to turn that massive competitor and be like them, they’re not going to innovate quick enough. There’s a whole bunch of books out there, Innovator’s Dilemma, all those types of things, where it’s hard to be innovating within a large corporation. So why would you want to copy what that large corporation is doing? I just don’t get it, personally.

Ryan:
Well, I want a copy of their bank account sometimes. It’s going to take some time to get there.

Jon:
Well, that’s exactly it. It’s always the overnight success story that everybody thinks, right?

Ryan:
Yeah.

Jon:
But it really is, it’s been years and years of hard work.

Ryan:
Well, I think that’s a good stopping point for part one. We’ll continue with part two probably in about four weeks.

Jon:
Awesome.

Ryan:
So be looking for that.

Ryan:
Any parting words in the first four laws of conversions?

Jon:
Well, those four laws, again, it’s really hard to read the label from inside the jar. Second is, consumers are only at your website for two reasons, to research and to purchase. The third is, your goals and your consumer’s goals are aligned. You both want a conversion. Lastly, that competitive research is not data.

Jon:
I think those are great things to live by and just truths that I’ve seen. If you start thinking about those and applying that to the way you’re running and operating your Ecomm site, then you’ll be off to the races. I can’t wait to share the next four with everybody.

Ryan:
You’re halfway through the battle of knowing the laws. We’ll get through the other half within a few weeks.

Ryan:
Thank you, Jon. I appreciate the time and the education.

Jon:
Thank you, Ryan.

Find out what stands between your company and digital excellence with a custom 5-Factors Scorecard™.

About the Author

Jon MacDonald

Jon MacDonald is founder and President of The Good, a digital experience optimization firm that has achieved results for some of the largest companies including Adobe, Nike, Xerox, Verizon, Intel and more. Jon regularly contributes to publications like Entrepreneur and Inc.