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Oct 31, 2026
BFCM Conversion: Psychology & AI
BFCM Conversion: Psychology & AI
00:00
56:37
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Transcript
0:00
Um, people will act very irrationally if you threaten to take something away. Threaten to take away a dollar, um, they're more likely to act than if you, uh, give them opportunity to gain $10.
0:12
Taking a very rigorous AB test, we can now interpret data retroactively and draw similar conclusions, at least at a good enough level for us to make meaningful changes to our website design.
0:24
Transactional shoppers love to find that, that, that big discount. They hate losing an opportunity for that discount.
0:32
You're listening to the Frankly Ecommerce Show, candid conversations about business with host Patrick Scott Pittman.
0:40
There's so much money gonna be spent on advertising in the next lead-up to the Black Friday season, that all those dollars going out the door need to be prepared for when the visitor comes to your store and wants to start evaluating whether to make that purchase.
0:55
So in the series of workshops that we're organizing, traffic is certainly one of the first. We've gotta get to the subject of conversion rate optimization, making the website as effective as a selling tool as it can be.
1:09
And there's nobody better that I know to speak to how to make a website sell more than Brian Massey of Conversion Sciences, here in the white lab coat, true to form. Brian, welcome to the Frankly Ecommerce Show.
1:22
Thank you for having me. It's, uh, important topic.
1:25
And I, I guess I wonder, to start things off, if when we think about the preparation that happens before a peak season, is there something that is in the mindset of the buyer different in this peak period than in the normal rest of the year?
1:43
Because so much often is at stake from a dollar standpoint. I had a project, uh, with a client the other day and they said, "We are gonna make one-third of our revenue in November." Mm-hmm.
1:56
It could not be more important. So is there something about the principles of conversion and website design, there's a lot of understanding over the years about how that can be done.
2:06
What changes, or if anything changes, in the mindset of the shopper in this peak period?
2:12
Yeah, so, um, I think a helpful model that we use, uh, is, um, you know, in the e-commerce world, there are, are two kinds of buyers, broadly speaking, that we can model messaging and creative and stuff after.
2:26
The first is what we call a relational buyer, and their greatest fear is making the wrong decision. Um, they see shopping as a, uh, part of the cost of, um, um, acquiring something.
2:43
The second group are the transactional buyers. Their greatest fear is spending $1 more than they could have gotten for a product. They see shopping as a full-contact sport. They see it as part of the, the fun.
2:57
Um, during the, uh, Black Friday, uh, Cyber Monday, um, and the holidays in general, those transactional buyers are lit up. We've, uh, you know, this is the Super Bowl for them.
3:11
Um, and they're looking for ways to get that extra 5% or combining discounts or, uh, getting two for the price of one. Um, and so yes, behavior changes during this time.
3:26
And, uh, the bugaboo is that, you know, you can do testing on your website during this time, but the behavior of the visitors is, is so different that it doesn't often map onto the rest of the year.
3:39
So you could have something that just worked gangbusters during this time, and if you try to do a similar promotion during the rest of the year, uh, it might not work. So,
3:49
uh, this time is, you know, it's, uh, the time to take advantage of the increase in traffic, just the general increase in traffic and the, uh, the traffic that is, um, signaling that it wants your product, um, now because they're buying for other people and things like that.
4:08
Um, and take advantage of the volume. Um, any learnings generally during this time are, can best be applied to next year's holiday season.
4:18
Is there a, a risk of changing too much about a website that makes it feel unfamiliar? There's the hope to make it better, but is there some, some benefit to keeping it familiar?
4:30
How do you sort of balance the trade-offs between too much and too little change, all in the spirit of better optimization? Yeah.
4:37
Familiarity is important, especially if you have a product that, um, is consumed frequency, freq- frequently. You know, if you're selling pet supplies, dog food, things like that.
4:48
Um, the return visitors, uh, and we see this with, um, website redesigns.
4:54
Uh, you know, we'll get a call after a website redesign launches, and the website is objectively better than the old one, but those return visitors, just the fact that it's different, um, throws them off-kilter, and, um, you know, reduces trust in the brand and stuff like that.
5:12
Um, during the shopping time, you know, if we're talking about adding banners and ads, and ideally we're creating custom landing pages for the offers that you're putting out into the world, um, I think it's, uh, less of an impact, uh, than, you know, redesigning, you know, mid-year or something like that.
5:33
Um, but I mean, that's what, um, that's what the, the testing tells you.
5:37
It gives you an idea of, um, how you're impacting those people that, you know, just wanna come and, and get what they've always gotten and, and don't wanna be wading through popups and, uh, scrolling past banners and, you know, the kind of the, the game show, uh, voice that websites tend to become during these high-promotion periods.
6:02
Thinking about a lot of the offers and the incentive to make a quick decision, in other words, to buy within a holiday offer window,
6:14
does that sometimes compromise the normal aspect of building trust and, and persuasion and the sort of broader principles that you would apply throughout the year? Does it...
6:27
How would it change or what would you be sensitive to when someone may have a considered purchase? Maybe it's a larger ticket item. Mm-hmm.
6:35
How do you address those kind of desires to like, the, the opportunity is buy now by this certain deadline, but that sometimes disrupts what they would otherwise you would want them to do as a shopper. Yeah.
6:47
Well, what Black Friday does is it, um, it delays decision-making. So it's not uncommon for there to be, um, a lull in that period before Black Friday.
6:58
Uh, people who are, um, you know, doing considered purchases, they're looking for that refrigerator or the, uh, the, the new dishwasher, um, they are
7:09
doing their research, the consideration process, and they're waiting for the sale to show up. So, uh, the, you know, one of the reasons that we have the high conversion rates is because they don't...
7:21
When they arrive at your site, they don't have to start from, "Oh, I need this," and go all the way through to, "I'm going to buy this brand on your website."
7:28
They've kind of already done that, and so they've, they've primed themselves, especially these transactional buyers that I'm talking about. Um, the other thing, uh, with transactional buyers is,
7:41
ironically enough, it can help to give them some hoops to jump through. Um, so, um, you know, they have to, um, answer a question to get the, uh, the coupon code or something like that.
7:54
Um, as I said, you know, shopping is, is part of the fun for them, and so that, that becomes, uh, you know, a part of the sport. Um- When you say sport- Sport... do you mean... Tell me more about that. I'm interested.
8:06
The, the sport of shopping, um, uh, is, they get a, a dopamine hit when they find that additional discount, or they find the bigger discount, um, or, you know, they, um, uh, got through the gauntlet of whatever you're putting in front of them.
8:25
Um, so that's, that's what we're talking about. They're, uh, they're scanning the horizon looking for opportunities to get bigger discounts or better deals, uh, or more features for the same price.
8:39
Uh, and you want to be a part of that horizon. But if it's, you know, what everybody else is getting, their question is like, "All right, how can I get more?" But they wanna be good at this.
8:51
Well, that's a, that's a fascinating observation, that shoppers want to be good at taking advantage of deals. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. You know, it's, it's part of the story.
9:02
You know, how, how often do you hear somebody say, "Oh, I got the... Oh, I love your shoes," and it always follows with- Yeah... "Yeah, and I got them 50%- [laughs]... off at, at so-and-so."
9:12
Like, it's part of, it's part of the story. Like buying art, you wanna know what inspired the artist. There's a story there. And the relational shoppers will tell you, um,
9:23
uh, you know, that, you know, uh, "I had this amazing shopper help me out," and so... And, and 'cause the relational shoppers are looking for someone to help them.
9:33
Uh, but you know, these are, you know, shopping is, is not rational. Shopping is emotional, and we just use rational, the rational part of it to rationalize our decisions, so.
9:45
So in making reference to different types of shoppers, you make comment about the relational one, the transactional. What other types of shoppers are there and how do we try and balance all of their needs?
9:58
So we also, especially when we're talking about generating, um, uh, building value, generating value propositions and messaging on landing pages and websites, we actually have, uh, uh, four quadrants that we use.
10:11
Um, and the, you know, the types are, you know, competitive. These are gonna be rational decision-makers, but they're gonna make decisions quickly.
10:22
Um, the methodicals, they're very deliberate and very rational, so they need lots of supporting evidence in order to buy something.
10:29
And if you have, if you have a product that is a considered purchase, or even if it's, even if not, you need to make sure that, that they understand the process. If you make a, a promise like, uh, this, this is,
10:42
has all the features but it's cheaper, you need to explain to them how you made it cheaper without compromising quality or features.
10:50
The spontaneous folks, they're these emotional fast decision-makers, and they're just looking for a way to, to take action.
10:56
So somebody, uh, who's done the research and they're gonna come on Black Friday and buy the product on your site, um, they've already done all the work, so they're just looking for, "All right, what's the best discount I can get and where do I buy?"
11:09
And then the last one are humanists. So they wanna know how they're gonna feel after they purchase your product. They wanna know...
11:15
These are the people that read your About page, um, that are looking for, uh, testimonials and things like that. Um, the, it's a, for them, it's about the, the connection they make with you and your brand.
11:28
So that's one of the, the models that we use.
11:29
We wanna make sure that we are, um, covering the relevant components of, uh, covering the relevant segments with the offers and the, uh, content that we're putting on these, uh, these pages, product pages, et cetera.
11:46
So I love how if we can basically think about a Black Friday offer, you're gonna advise that for each type of shopper, we consider how that offer lands. Mm-hmm.
11:57
Or maybe even bring a different offer for the type of shopper who is, um, more transactional versus one who's more relational, or even you spoke to the humanist.
12:07
Maybe they're, maybe they're motivated in that case to be supporting the, the charity that your brand, uh, underwrites and- Yeah, that would be a very humanist sentiment. Yeah. Yeah. So does that shape...
12:19
So in other words, it sounds like you could offer guidance on how the Black Friday deal is even conceived and presented? Yeah.
12:30
And so, you know, it's a great model for generating additional ad creative, and in our business, you don't generate ad creative without generating landing page creative.
12:41
Um, so you would offer, um, the discounts for those spontaneous buyers. Um, and, you know, to your earlier question, you know, the thing that Black Friday, Cyber Monday brings is, uh, scarcity.
12:57
So it's going to end very soon, and, uh, transactional shoppers love to find that, that, that big discount, but they hate losing an opportunity for that discount. Like, it, it follows them and bothers them.
13:11
So, um, that's one of the reasons that you have these much higher conversion rates on websites is because it's gonna go away, and humans in general fear loss more than they, uh, enjoy gain.
13:24
Um- Well, just hold on that for a minute. People fear losing more than they fear gaining. Or, or are they, they, they more... People fear losing more than they enjoy gaining. Is that how you would say it? Yes.
13:41
How does that- There's been a lot of research on, on this, and, um, people will act very irrationally if you threaten to take something away.
13:49
Threaten to take away a dollar, um, they're more likely to act than if you, uh, give them opportunity to gain $10, and there's a, um, a lot of studies that have used game theory to, uh, to understand this. Yeah.
14:03
I'm, I'm familiar with some of those ideas around trying to get people to do things. How much is your practice grounded in some psychological point of view about what makes us human?
14:16
Is there a, a methodology that you say in the work that you do, you apply this- Yeah.
14:23
And, you know, there's a, there are a certain number of effects that are, are well-researched, um, and we do wanna apply that psychology. Now, there is a line here that we wanna make sure we don't cross.
14:34
So we wanna be persuasive. We don't wanna be manipulative, you know, since we might have heard of, like, dark patterns. So, uh, for instance, we can just make up that there's a deadline for, uh, an offer.
14:47
Like, you come to a website and it's like, "Oh, 20% off. Goes away in 24 hours." Put a countdown timer on there, and you've activated that fear of loss.
14:59
Um, but those offers typically aren't gonna disappear in 24 hours, so it's, it's disingenuous. Um, but it's effective. So we wanna make sure that we are, um, you know, we're, we're... Like
15:13
Black Friday, Cyber Monday are great for triggering that fear of loss. Um, and, uh, we wanna make sure that we use those sorts of, of biases and effects, um, fairly, I guess you would say.
15:28
Does that make- Is Black, is Black Friday though the ultimate sort of short time and legitimate window of scarcity that we can all sort of take as truthful? Uh, yeah, yeah. I think that's part of it.
15:43
You know, those humanists, if you do something that makes them feel like they can't trust you, then, um, they're, they're not gonna buy.
15:51
They're g- they just, they just don't wanna do business with somebody who's trying to manipulate them. Um, and we've seen Amazon do this with Prime Day.
15:58
So they've kind of created their, their own, uh, section, their own little holiday seasons in the middle of the summer, um, by having Prime Day. So I know Prime Day's coming in a month. I'm gonna start doing my research.
16:11
I'm gonna start categorizing all the things that I need because I know that I'm gonna get some amazing deals or finally get to get that TV. Um, so it can, it, it, it isn't necessarily just applying to the holiday season.
16:24
Uh, you can use it, uh, in other places. Yeah.
16:28
But it is case that the, the dark pattern of, of false scarcity or a false urgency does sort of drop away during this framing of Black Friday to Cyber Monday, and that period, you know, more and more it stretches into early November, right?
16:44
Mm-hmm. Like, the early, the pre-Black Friday sale, that p- that window I think gets, gets bigger as we go. It does. [laughs] And that may, that may work against us, you know? Tell me why.
16:56
Why would it work against us to have that expanding window of time for Black Friday? Because if you have that expanding window of time, it reduces the urgency. Like, you know, I had 24 hours on Black Friday.
17:09
Now we have Cyber Monday, and those Black Friday, um, offers generally will last until the end of the month. They'll last until the end of the year, and so it takes that urgency away. Yeah.
17:28
When you are approached by a brand wanting to improve for the holiday season, what is the level of detail you go to? If you only have a period of weeks- Mm-hmm... like a more thorough or comprehensive approach.
17:45
But for someone saying, "I've got weeks to make this better," how do you start to make the project into smaller and manageable pieces given that time constraint? Yeah. So m- two things happen.
17:57
Um, number one, there is, um, this, uh, creative effort in terms of the way that you're promoting your particular, um, Black Friday, Cyber Monday promotions.
18:10
Um, that generally goes out in ads, it goes out in emails, goes out in social media posts, but it also enables some things that, um, have proven really effective with our clients.
18:20
Um, an example of that is an exit intent pop-up in your cart So somebody comes in, they choose a product, add it to the cart, and then they, they go away.
18:33
And s- so we can detect when someone is, um, scrolling back to the top to hit the back button on a mobile phone or moving their cursor up to the top to hit the back button or close the window.
18:44
And it's a great time to pop up, um, a, um, an exit intent window that says, "Hey, you know, this, there's, you know, 20% off here." Great time to put a countdown timer there.
18:58
Um, it's legitimate, so you're not really manipulating them.
19:01
And you will be surprised at the number of carts that you can save, because people will leave fully expecting to come back, and then, you know, the window closes, uh, they get distracted.
19:12
So if they're like, "Oh, I can... I should probably just go ahead and take care of this," um, it can be very effective.
19:18
So those- It sounds like that's, that's one example of a simple, sort of simple technique that you can apply.
19:24
If you don't already have that working, you can turn that on before the peak season without a lot of design and revisions, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. It's, it's usually very, very straightforward.
19:34
On Shopify, there's dozens of, um, uh, apps that you can use to, to enable that sort of thing. The other thing is, um, being very specific about connecting the ad to the landing experience.
19:51
So for instance, if you've got 20% off Black Friday, and then you bring them to maybe a category page that lists, you know, grid-wise, all of the products that you have in a particular category, and you're counting on a banner at the top to say, like, oh, 20% off on everything,
20:09
um, that is not gonna be as effective as having a landing experience that drops in the top of the page in big, bold letters like, "Here's where you get your discount."
20:21
And then you can feature the most, uh, popular products. You can, um, ex- use that space to talk more to your methodicals and your competitives who w- need that rational support, um, about what your value proposition is.
20:36
Why, you know, are you, um... Do you have a generous return policy? Uh, do you have, uh, fast delivery? Um, do you offer gift wrapping for people who are giving gifts? Things like that.
20:48
Uh, bringing them to a page that lets you build that value proposition more is going to tie them more closely to the ad. Um, methodicals are gonna wanna know about the, uh, amazing new dishwasher that uses direct drive.
21:03
Um, and they need to come to a page that mentions direct drive and has a picture of that. Even if below that you're showing a lot more products, the landing experience needs to really tie to that ad.
21:18
It reminds me of a conversation I had with Rob Green, who, teaching a workshop in this Frankly Ecommerce season of, of our... on the ad creative process.
21:29
And one of the things he made the point of is how much Meta wants to be able to say, "Okay, we have this ad, and we look at it, we analyze it in its, all its visual detail, and now we know who is the right person to show this ad to."
21:47
Mm-hmm. If the ad is designed differently, it'll optimize who sees it differently based on its visual appearance. So in other words, you're taking an ad and saying, "Okay, now we're gonna show it to these people."
21:58
How much can you do that with landing pages in terms of being able to have many different versions of the same sort of landing page? Are you creating multiple landing pages?
22:08
Are you trying to make one that is, is suitable for all types? What's your approach to landing page design these days? Yeah. So it, you know, it's always been a bit of an issue.
22:16
So, um, especially now that, um, a, a lot of it is automated on the ad side. Um, so they're iterating on creative and stuff like that.
22:27
Um, but those, those flagship ad- those flagship ads that you know are, are bringing people should have their own landing experience. And because
22:39
the way marketing departments just work, ads can be generated very quickly and very easily. Landing pages require IT's involvement and, um, a lot of design work and a lot of thought on the copy and things like that.
22:55
Uh, you've, you've gotta break that. And fortunately, we have some new tools now that make it very, very easy to do that.
23:02
So for instance, we've develo- we've developed a skill, uh, for, um, Claude that, uh, we call, um, add to landing page. And it will take an ad, and it will create a landing page specifically for that.
23:16
So now it's pretty easy to generate these landing pages, uh, uh, that are well-aligned, and there's 10 points that we look at for aligning ads to landing pages.
23:25
And you can manage this portfolio of landing pages, um, much more easily. Um, you know, it's, pages are pages. It's b- always been the development of those that we get wrapped around the axle.
23:38
So if, if your language model has a skill and it can generate these very easily, um, that alignment is good for between 5 and 20% lift in your return on ad spend.
23:52
Hey, a break for a moment just to make the observation about how much effort we spend to bring visitors to our e-commerce websites.
24:00
And if we just knew a little bit more about them, we could do so much more with the tools, the apps we've already layered into our tech stack if we could just be more personal.
24:11
So I've asked Wunderkind to help be a sponsor of this season of Frankly Ecommerce.
24:17
And what they're basically able to do is tell you who's visiting your website, and that accelerates all the things you're already trying to do. I love the way they've broken this out in this quick grid.
24:28
Let me share what that looks like Identify more shoppers, capture their intent. There's signals, actions to be noticed.
24:40
There's a flexibility around how the rules are made, the personalizations there, the supercharging of your existing stack. These are all things that are worth a closer look. And Wunderkind came and visited us.
24:53
Konya Malawan came to join the workshop on October 9th that Dan Hansfeld put together on developing profitable Black Friday offers.
25:02
Had a great conversation with the brands that are in the room on how they can think about this being a way to, again, accelerate what you're already doing.
25:10
So check out Wunderkind, and thanks for being a sponsor of the Frankly Ecommerce Show.
25:16
You're saying that by tailoring the landing page to match up with the ad across many different variations, the, the lift can be 5 to 20% in terms of how that improves conversion. Yes.
25:30
Does that put you into then the situation of as you have... I mean, the other day I had a conversation with someone generating 3,000 creatives a week in terms of their ads.
25:40
How do you correlate that or step that down to how many landing pages are, are realistic or able to manage in the way that you're doing it? Yeah.
25:48
So what Archill does is, the first thing it does is it examines the website for an existing page that closely matches the promise made in the, in the ad. Um, and then if it, it doesn't feel like it has that, it can...
26:02
It'll generate a, a custom landing page for that. And that does have to be reviewed, you know. Um, they're, they're not all perfect. But it doesn't require the, you know, the page development process.
26:14
So, uh, if you've got, um... Like, you don't wanna, you really don't wanna try to manage and audit 3,000 landing pages. So, uh, the issue is this.
26:26
You have an ad that's generating a lot of clicks, but it's not generating any conversions. What do you do? Do you go fix the landing page? No. You, you change the ad.
26:35
So you walk away from those clicks when the issue might be that you promised 20% and then you brought them to the home page, and the home page is, you know, the person has to dig and, and go and find where the discount is.
26:47
It's a broken promise, and especially out with Meta where... I mean, think about this. I'm going through my news feed. Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. I see an ad. That's interesting.
26:57
Click on it, and then I have to do work to find the promise that was made. You can't slide that much cognitive load into a, a dopamine, uh, flow.
27:10
The first thing your landing page needs to do is give them another dopamine hit. Yes, you're in the right place, and here's more information and more reasons you should buy. Yeah. I, I love the, the framing of that
27:26
mindset of the shopper going through the scroll and then having to get to a landing page that prompts some confusion or some- Mm-hmm...
27:35
some more investigation than they were anticipating 'cause they weren't even sure they were gonna click. And then for whatever reason, you got the f- you got the, the click and now don't, don't blow it, right? Yeah.
27:47
So do you find yourself advising or shifting the ad creative strategy, going back in the other direction saying, "Here with these landing pages, we have a certain level of conversion. Let's make more ads and support"?
28:02
Does it go, does it go both ways? Is it g- It does go both ways, yeah. Um, so it's, it's a little bit more work to test on the landing page side of things, but, you know, if we find a headline...
28:12
You know, we're, we're generally... When you're testing messaging and headlines and things like that, you want kind of extreme variations.
28:20
You know, going in and changing a few words, it may increase your conversion rates, but the, the effect may not be that detectable.
28:27
So you want something that's very different, and that's why these, these four quadrants are really helpful. If you've got, uh, uh, you know, a, uh, a headline, um, and a subhead that really appeals to those methodicals,
28:39
you can say like, "Okay, well, what if we made this appeal to those humanists?" Two very different voices.
28:45
And so when we find wins like that, that information should go back to the ad team 'cause they're like, "Oh, apparently we have some humanists coming in here, and we need some humanist-oriented ads." Do you end up then
29:01
building landing pages for each type of shopper that we spoke about with respect to the transactional, the humanist, the methodicals, the relational? Do you end up classifying landing pages by type of shopper?
29:14
Yeah, so we don't, um, we don't necessarily have... On, in the e-commerce world, you know, the product page is the, is the workhorse.
29:22
And, um, s- so typically you don't have multiple product pages, you know, for a given product, you know, where you're just essentially changing the methodology.
29:31
Um, so what we do is we appeal to each of the quadrants that, that we think are coming to the site, you know, methodical, competitive, spontaneous, humanist, um, on the page.
29:43
The deliberate visitors, the humanists and the methodicals, tend to scroll more. So messaging that's designed for those spontaneous, uh, buyers... And most product pages are designed this way.
29:53
You've got price, you got pictures, short description, buy button right at the top for those people who are like, "Yes, I'm just gonna buy this thing."
30:01
Scroll a little bit more, um, and you need to tell those competitives what's in it for them 'cause they, they're very focused on what makes them better.
30:10
And then you scroll down and you'll have, you know, specs and details, and then you scroll down a little bit more, you'll have case studies and, um, uh, testimonials and things like that for the humanists.
30:21
And so that's kind of the way we, we do that. And changing the order, uh, of those, um, uh, is, you know, some of the things that we play with.
30:32
Do we need to bring more of that humanist voice into the description at the top of the page? Um, things like that. And so,
30:41
w- you know, we've Recently had some interesting luck in making the product pages look like landing pages. Um, so they break some of the, the rules of a typical landing page.
30:53
Um, and we've had in, in one case, a significant increase in conversion rates, uh, taking that approach. Amazon- Yeah. I mean,
31:08
the, the, you know, the, the product page that Shopify is training us on is, like, we come in, the name of the product at the top, price is there, picture's here, little description, uh, any size or color choices, add to cart, um, you know,
31:27
buy now, pay later, uh, links, and then I scroll down if I wanna, like, do some more research. Bringing some of that value proposition above the, um,
31:39
you know, above the, the pricing and the images, uh, in certain situations will give those methodicals and those competitives what they need, be like, "Oh, okay. I'm in the right place here." So
31:52
would you say that for a brand wanting to run some experiments or shift some things during a prep for Black Friday, do they, do they redo the product detail page?
32:05
Is that where the money's at, where they need to be focused?
32:07
Or do they experiment with, with non-PDP pages, call them landing pages of some development by perhaps one of the skills you described using Claude, that is more of a, a freeform experiment, not as structured as Shopify's template for what a product page looks like?
32:25
Yeah. What would you advise? Well, this is where intent can really come in. So we have tools, um, A/B testing tools, um, uh, intent-driven tools that allow you to, uh, change your product page in situ.
32:40
So it could be something as simple as for during the Black Friday, Cyber Monday sales, we wanna make sure that every one of our product pages has the, the cross-out number, and then below it, the Black Friday, Cyber Monday special number.
32:56
Um, what usually happens is we run Black Friday ads for a new product. We bring the visitor to the product page, and then the, the product page is generic. It's what it's always been.
33:09
So we can use these tools to temporarily reinforce that they're in the right place. Those transactional buyers are like, "Yes, I found it." Um, and so the rug doesn't get pulled out from under them.
33:21
And these tools change the website in the visitor's browser using a little bit of JavaScript.
33:28
And so it's very easy to, to make that change, and then when the sale's over, you turn it off, and it goes back to the original product page.
33:36
You can get much more sophisticated, uh, than that, but, um, you know, that's the first step. Um, always keeping your promises is, is just so important. If you could maybe
33:50
underline those principles, keeping a promise is, is near the top. Mm-hmm. What, over the years, you've, you've been doing this for a long time. Mm-hmm.
34:02
As you, regardless of the technology and the evolutions and, and the years, all the AI opportunity that's changed this year, what has stayed the same?
34:13
Um, you know, in terms of, you know, are you talking, asking specifically about this add to landing page approach, or are you talking more- I'm thinking about, I guess, the conversion optimization, the web design, the e-commerce shopping experience.
34:26
You know what I mean? Maybe what I'm asking about is humans haven't changed as much as the technology has. Mm-hmm.
34:32
So we wanna have people who keep their promises, and you spoke about the different types of people that you classify them into. So I guess as you translate that to some design or conversion rate principles,
34:44
what hasn't changed so much over the years in this period of great change? [laughs] Well, I mean, uh, I think your point is true. Humans are humans.
34:56
So, um, uh, there are two questions that you always have to answer when they, after they click on an ad or click on an email, and am I in the right place?
35:06
Is this the place that I was promised or the place I was looking for? And is there a reason for me to keep looking, right? Um, you know, in a, a,
35:19
i- on an e-commerce site, if we bring them to, uh, a category page, it's generally, like, start listing the products and let them fish through it.
35:28
Um, we like to put things at the top of the page that give them reasons to keep looking, and this is a great place to put scarcity if the sale's gonna go away.
35:37
It's a great place to reinforce, as I said, your, your return policy, uh, your delivery times, uh, your quality, your awards, whatever it is.
35:49
I need to come and understand that, oh, if I leave this place, I may not find another place that has these qualities that, you know, reduces the risk for me and, and so forth. Um,
36:02
and so I think that's, that's always been universal. Um, uh, things like doing value-building. So here's the product, here's the price, but it includes this, which is this value.
36:16
It includes this, which is this value, and this, which is this value. Um, that's something that has universally been, been done. The, um,
36:27
the space, the hero area on most of our webpages, that was, uh, originally called the Johnson Box, and its job was to hit the offer that that page is about and get them excited so that, you know, in the case in the old days, it was, you know, a sales letter type approach.
36:46
Um, we've adopted them and called them something else, but, um, the, the way of persuading people has, has really not changed. We have perhaps a little bit less time, uh, where the people are not willing to, um,
37:03
give us what's in their cognitive bank, um, as much as they used to. Uh, but, you know, I think that's probably the primary thing that's changed.
37:15
I don't, and I don't wanna leave you with the thought that I hate this sta- Like, we have the attention of a goldfish, which is like, you have basically eight seconds to get somebody's attention.
37:27
Uh, it's not true if you give them a reason to get ex- be excited about your brand or the product early in that process, right at the top.
37:37
So you would say that we don't have to be in such a hurry or losing someone's attention if there's a compelling reason right from the start. There's the way to keep going. Yeah. Yeah.
37:48
And if that reason isn't compelling to a visitor and they go away, then they're probably not a customer for your product. Yeah. They're... Something else is important to them.
37:58
Yeah, I love how when you framed it, you described, "Am I in the right place?" Or when I look... I was looking for it. And then the second thing you said was, "Is there a reason for me to keep looking?" Mm-hmm.
38:11
And so that suggests that all we really need to do is just have the, the scent strong enough to just take the next step, the next scroll. We don't have to give it all at once. We don't have to make the case all at once.
38:26
We're really just trying to, to, I guess I would say, lead them along. Is that how you might frame it? Yes. Yeah. Um,
38:34
you know, we see this more on the lead generation side of things, but people are think that their headline, their subhead has to give them all the reasons that they would buy the product.
38:46
All it really needs to do is give them a curious enough reaction that they scroll down. Like, their... The best reactions are, "Really? How are you gonna do that? And I've gotta scroll to find out."
38:58
If you can find those sorts of sentiments with your, um, you know, primary buyers, um, that's gonna be an effective landing page. We're coming up on the top of the hour. Do you have a few moments to continue? I do.
39:15
Why do you like this work? Why do I like this work? Oh my gosh. Why would I not? Um, so the business that we're in is, uh, generating data that supports our proposed decisions.
39:33
So we're really smart, and I can look at any page and come up with 10 really good ideas for how to improve the, the conversion rates. Because I've been doing this a long time, I'll only be wrong on
39:44
a little, a half of those, maybe a little bit more than half of those. I'll just be wrong. It won't increase the conversion rate, and some of my ideas will actually decrease the conversion rate.
39:52
So our job is to design experiments that help us answer that questions. Which of these 10 ideas are the really good ones, and which of them do we not wanna put on the site? And it, it creates kind of a horse race.
40:08
So A/B testing, even doing customer research, um, you know, by bringing panels of people to look at creative, uh, it's exciting. With our customers, uh, we're meeting with them weekly.
40:19
We've generally got tests in the water, and we're all excited to see if this great idea that we had is actually going to move the needle. Um, and it's full of heartbreak.
40:30
I mean, so many great, beautiful, much better designs just don't improve the conversion rate for some reason. Um, and then going in and understanding the why of that, um, diving into the data is, for me, very exciting.
40:44
I'm a, you know, computer scientist, um, uh, as well as a marketer, so, um, I like deterministic answers to important questions.
40:56
And, you know, w- we, we have long engagements with our clients, so we get to start asking questions like, "Is our pricing too high? Could we raise our prices and not reduce conversion rates?"
41:05
Like, "Is there elasticity in there that would allow us to take down more profit just by changing the prices or changing how we present the prices?" Um, business decisions, "Should we go into this product?"
41:18
Um, "Should we bundle these things?" Um, so we can become a lot more strategic. We become more of a, like a data utility for decision-making. Um, and it's... E- every business is different.
41:31
Every business is fascinating, and I just... The variety never stops. Can you think back to maybe one of your first projects and how, how long ago that m- might have been?
41:42
And, and there must have been something about it to hold and capture that interest around... You said you seek deterministic outcomes, but you're both a scientist and a marketer- Mm-hmm... making promises.
41:55
What might be an example of something that you worked on early that kind of captured your imagination in this work? I think that, um... So,
42:07
uh, I spent a good part of my career in the ear- early part of the 2000s building websites, primarily lead generation websites. Um, and I was
42:20
railing, I was blogging at the time and everything, and I railed against the way we build websites. So it, it absolutely makes no sense. We're going to get a small team of people to make
42:33
10,000 decisions about how a website should look, what the messaging should be, what the images should be, what the offer should be, what the navigation should be.
42:43
This small group of people is gonna make all these decisions, and then they're gonna push it out all at once, change everything on the visitors, and hope that they made more good decisions than bad decisions
42:55
This is what really energized me. I'm like, "This is, this is not the way to do this." Um, you should be doing it incrementally. You should be isolating the, the big ideas.
43:05
You should be designing experiments that allow you to determine if this is a good idea or not, or if there's a better way to implement it. Um, and, you know, you're always redesigning.
43:15
Every change is an experiment, just most people don't go back and look at the data.
43:21
So that's really what energized me, is that, um, you know, with the advent of analytics, um, and, uh, you know, inexpensive analytics tools, and these A/B testing tools that allow us to change any website in the visitor's browser, so we can do whatever we want.
43:37
Um, that was very exciting, 'cause we could begin to answer those questions. Um, and, uh, you know, people begin to understand that there is a real cost to launching something,
43:51
a change to the website, uh, because it could absolutely reduce your conversion rate. We have winners in our tests, and we have saves. Uh, 'cause if you'd have launched this, you would've reduced your conversion rate.
44:02
Thank God we didn't do that. Uh, and that, that's for me is, is very gratifying, that our customers have completely changed the way they see redesigning a website. And ultimately, that's what we do.
44:15
We redesign websites, but we do it very methodically, very purposefully, and to some it seems, very slowly.
44:21
[laughs] Well, we're gonna be in a workshop setting in Austin, where we'll have people gathered around a room, and I'd love for them to be able... Some of them to walk away with saying, "Oh, I got a real win today.
44:35
Oh, man, he saved me from making this mistake." Mm-hmm.
44:39
What comes up when you put people in a room together and they're able to sort of see and experiment and talk about these kind of things, as compared to just sending a, you know, sending a digital test to some, some test audience?
44:51
What comes out of the, the human relational experience in that kind of workshop setting that you like? Hmm. So much. Um, so
45:01
how you manage your resources, you know, if you're part of a marketing team, or you're managing a marketing team, and let me give you an example.
45:08
So, uh, we wanna redesign this, this landing page when we were doing a rebranding or something like that. Design team will come back with three options.
45:19
Boom, boom, here's three different options for how we could design this. Pick the one you like. The right answer there is like, "No, I'm, I'm, I'm not a designer.
45:29
Will you collect some data that will tell me which one of these is going to be most effective?" And most design firms will look at you like you've got two heads. Like, "Um, I don't know how to do that.
45:40
Don't you just trust our creative people?" Um,
45:44
when people walk away understanding that number one, they have a, a vocabulary, number two, they know what to ask for and what to look for, and that they have permission to ask for that data, I think it's gonna transform their relationships with their internal teams and their agencies that are doing work with them.
46:00
And some- sometimes it's going to cost an agency relationship. Um, that for me is very exciting. So it's kind of that empowerment. Um, I hope... I don't, I don't have a lot of data on this, but I hope that people,
46:16
when we s- when we start getting into situations like Black Friday, we tend to get careful. We get... We kind of contract, and like, "Okay, we won't, we don't wanna blow this.
46:25
We've only got a short period of time to maximize our revenue," so we get careful with our creative.
46:32
Well, testing allows you to take some more risks, get a little crazy, try something that's a little bit out there, because you're not committing your spend to it, you're doing a test, and you're gonna know if this idea was not a good idea.
46:46
But some of those ideas will just rock your world, and you're like, "Wow, I'm so glad that I had a, a way to, to test that," 'cause, you know, crazy ideas, you're not gonna present that to the team, you know, two weeks before Black Friday, um, just 'cause you can't sell it.
47:04
Go collect the data that says whether or not it's a good idea or bad. Yeah. Do you have time for one more question? I do. One of the big blocks to buying online is confusion around shipping. Mm-hmm.
47:21
And much as free shipping has become a standard in the pricing of how much that costs, there's still times when it doesn't be as simple as just included in the prod price.
47:32
There's, there's even questions around holidays around urgency and delivery. Mm-hmm. One of the, um, one of the ways our workshop's is coming together is through the help of Shipper HQ, also based in Austin. Mm-hmm.
47:47
And we, we made a promise around how to make that simpler all around to handle sort of any different shipping configuration.
47:57
I'm wondering how you would rank the priority of addressing confusion around shipping broadly in the e-commerce experience. If there's anything that you... For example, you could do landing pages.
48:09
We talked about various, um, types of humans and their perceiving of information. But shipping is a universal question. Mm-hmm. How do you rank its importance, and how do you approach that problem? Uh, so it is...
48:23
It's very important, and in general what we want to do is remove shipping from the consideration set. So free shipping is the easiest way to do that. Um,
48:35
we tend to forget to repeat that over and over, it's free shipping, it's free shipping as we go through the cart and then through the, the checkout process.
48:42
But even if you've got flat rate shipping, let's say that everybody pays $7.95 no matter what they're shipping, um, and that's a pretty easy number to come to, you're removing it from the consideration set.
48:54
Like I know going in what that is. There's a big chunk of the, uh, cart abandonment is simply people putting things in the cart- Clicking through to see what that final number is.
49:05
They wanna know what tax is gonna be and what shipping is gonna be. And once they have it, they're like, "Okay, I now have the data, and I can think about this." And so that's cart abandonment. Um,
49:17
doing anything you can to remove that from the consideration set and let them just really focus on the products, the price, color, size, whatever it might be, um, is gonna s- is gonna ease things for them.
49:32
Now, the flip side of that is if you build, um, exceptional value through that purchase process and they feel like, "Wow, I'm getting an amazing product for a good price," shipping doesn't, um, doesn't deter that.
49:46
But in general, in general, we- we'll want to eliminate it as an anxiety source. Yeah.
49:57
Is there anything else that you'd want our listeners to know as you yourself, um, are wanting to help in this workshop context? What would someone hope to walk away with from spending an afternoon with you?
50:14
Um, I think it's exactly that, the value of, um, collecting the data. And you don't have to be doing A/B testing.
50:22
Uh, there's a very straightforward thing that someone can do is, uh, we made this change to the website, and it's changed navigation. We made this change to our product page template,
50:32
and that is going and doing a bit more rigorous look at the before and after. Um, you can actually model the before and after as if you had done an A/B test. Uh, it doesn't isolate all of the variables. But being,
50:49
being very diligent about tracking what you're changing,
50:52
looking 30 days before, 30 days after that change, and seeing statistically if, uh, you have increased or decreased your conversion rates, your average order values, the revenue you're generating, um, whatever it is that you're tracking.
51:08
Um, uh, just realizing that as a digital marketer, you, you've gotta be data aware. Um, you know, it's as important as having images of your product on, on the product page.
51:22
Like, you need to be data aware and understand what's going on, and you don't have to boil the ocean on this. So
51:30
my invitation is to, um, make this feel a little bit safer for people to, to dive into and get curious and realizing we have all of these tools.
51:40
Like, now I can, I can do a before and after comparison by, um, typing into a language model that's connected to my analytics and saying like, "We launched this change on this date.
51:52
Um, do a before and after analysis, and tell me statistically what the, the confidence level is for that." Uh, you know, it takes 15 minutes.
52:00
Sounds like with the way in which the AI tools have evolved, we're able to apply more analysis than what might have passed, taken a very rigorous A/B test.
52:11
We can now interpret data retroactively and draw similar conclusions, at least at a good enough level for us to make meaningful changes to our website design. Mm-hmm.
52:21
And it sounds like also you're able to bring people into bringing more awareness of what can be tested, but also more confidence in, say, giving feedback or even pushing back on people who are on the, on the team or in agencies they work with to give them the kind of data they need to make more decisions and make it- Mm-hmm...
52:41
less subjective. Yeah. One of our principles is your opinion doesn't matter. Our opinion doesn't matter. Uh, we can collect some data on that.
52:50
But whenever someone on the team or, you know, especially an executive is, like, injecting their opinion into your creative, it means that they don't have confidence in the decisions that you've been making.
53:03
And if you can collect some data to show them, it's just like, "Yeah. Well, we did this. We did this. This one won," then those opinions get parked, and, um, the best creative can be rolled out,
53:16
and you can start from there to find the next best creative. Well, does it seem like in the end you're in the confidence game?
53:23
You're either trying to build confidence in your own conclusions about the work that you've done, or you're trying to build confidence in the shopper's mind and heart to go ahead and make that purchase.
53:33
It's like all around, um, building confidence, would you say? That's interesting. I've not actually had that specific thought, but, uh, yeah, yeah. I mean, you asked about psychology earlier.
53:46
You know, the real psychology you have to pay attention to is the marketing team's psychology. Um, you know, is it group think? Um, are they
53:55
applying some sort of deterministic, uh, principles to the decisions that they're making? Um, and what is their fear of loss?
54:04
Um, you know, things like that, like the things that cause us to create styrofoam creative, um, are... That's what we should be looking at, our own biases and our own stereotypes and our own shortcuts.
54:18
Well, I love the fact that if you're able to bring an understanding of these principles, you can have more confidence in being able to make decisions that might carry a little more risk but also some more reward in the end.
54:30
Absolutely.
54:31
I mean, ultimately, it's the most measurable marketing you're ever gonna do 'cause we're designing experiments that will tell us exactly which ones are winners and by about how much we expect the conversion rate to go up.
54:42
It's, it doesn't... If we're not performing, it's, it's really obvious. Yeah. Well, these are ideas that anyone can apply.
54:49
If you happen to be near Austin in October, check out franklyecommerce.com and see if you might be able to participate in the workshop that Brian will be helping us with.
54:59
And otherwise, Brian, I've enjoyed the things we talked about and that human psychology, different types of people, and thank you for being a part of the Frankly Ecommerce Show.
55:08
Oh, I'm so glad to be here, and I'm looking forward to the workshop. Very good. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Frankly Ecommerce with host Patrick Scott Pittman.
55:17
Read episode notes and get links to learn more at franklyecommerce.com. Next time you're in Austin, check out the Austin Shopify Meetup. It's open to all.
55:30
There's a good chance you'll meet just the right person, as it's one of the longest running meetups with 2,600 participants going on 15 years.
55:40
If you'd like to get more involved beyond the meetup, then Frankly Ecommerce pass holders participate in workshops and special invitation-only events. Subscribe to our newsletter at franklyecommerce.com to learn more.
55:53
This episode is sponsored in part by the friendly team at eBusiness PROS, a marketing firm in Austin, Texas. If you're a brand seeking to connect with an enthusiast audience and hold their attention,
56:06
if you want less discounting and more story, if you're curious about what we might mean by attuned marketing as contrast to behavioral trickery, then contact us at ebusinesspros.com. Ask for Abigail. That's me.
56:20
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