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Welcome back to another episode of the Brand Builder Show!
This week we’re joined by Jon MacDonald, founder of leading Conversion Rate Optimization agency The Good.
In this episode we discussed what Jon has learnt about consumer behaviour and conversion rate growth from working with international brands like Adobe, Xerox, The Telegraph and The Economist.
Learn more from Jon:
- Jon’s book: Opting In To Optimization
- A collection of Jon’s website teardowns (absolute GOLD)
Helpful resources:
- Subscribe (free) to the Brand Builder Weekly (latest eCom news & strategies)
- Follow Ben on Twitter
If you got this far, there’s a chance you enjoyed the episode… if so, please consider leaving a review – we really appreciate it!
Talking Points:
00:00 Introducing Jon
03:23 Roles in a CRO agency
07:45 Improving conversion rate
11:05 Common failings of new clients
15:43 Advice on navigational menu
18:45 Gaining customer’s trust
23:00 CRO checklist
25:20 Starting an Ecommerce site
31:30 Site testing from customer’s view
Ben Donovan
Welcome back to another episode of The Brand Builder show. In today’s episode, we’re gonna be talking about all things website optimization, how to improve your conversion rate, so you can make more sales on your website. And to join me to talk about this topic is Jon MacDonald. Jon, welcome to the show.
Jon MacDonald
How are you? Thanks for having me.
Ben Donovan
No, it’s my pleasure. I have been following you for some time. Now, I think I found you when you were doing some tear downs of websites live. And I just thought this content is absolute gold. And I recently got an email from you that talked about your work with the telegraph, which is a huge, you know, media publication, especially here in the UK where I am, and really grabbed my attention. I thought Man, this guy is absolutely crushing it at another level. And so I wanted to get you on the show and ask you about all things conversion rate optimization. Before we dive into the questions, I would love for you to introduce yourself to anybody that doesn’t know who you are, you know, your journey with E commerce and and what you do with your agency right now.
Jon MacDonald
Sure, so founder and CEO at The Good. The good is a conversion rate optimization firm. So we help brands to convert more of their existing visitors into customers. So we don’t do anything with driving traffic, we focus exclusively on on site optimization. We’ve been doing this for over 13 years now. So we were one of the very early players in what is now known as conversion rate optimization. We originally started out as an E commerce development shop, and we did optimization as well. And came to find out very quickly that that is really where we were uniquely skilled. And at the same time, that’s where the demand was for our services. And it was why people were working with us. So we transitioned pretty quickly into just doing optimization. At the time, we call it continual optimization. Now it’s very well known as conversion rate optimization. And yes, so like you mentioned, I work with brands, large and small. Nike, Xerox, Adobe telegraph, The Economist, as well as hundreds of midsize brands over that day, decade or so.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, ultimately, you say we you’re working with a big team now?
Jon MacDonald
Yeah, so I’m headquartered in Portland, Oregon, United States, and we have folks throughout the country, we’re almost entirely US based. We do have some development help overseas that that we work with. But yet the you know, really, it’s a team effort. These days, quite honestly, I’m rarely doing actual client work. I’m mainly, you know, looking forward that that’s how I view you know, we’re at a large enough size that I need to be keeping my eye on where we’re going, what the trends are, wherever been leading the team in that direction, right leading the chart. So in terms of the day to day client work, you know, my goal was always when I started out to hire people that were smarter than me and set them up for success and feel very fortunate that that’s the case.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, awesome. What kind of roles are there in a CRO agency.
Jon MacDonald
Yeah, so this is the interesting part about CRO, you can’t go to school for it, there’s no school for, it’s, it’s really interesting. It’s such a diverse and unique skill set. And you need to be able to pull in several different items. And this is where the vast majority of general marketing or E commerce firms who all list conversion rate optimization as maybe a bullet point on their their list of services. This is where I start to call BS, because you can’t have one person on your team that you say is your CRO expert, it’s really, really hard to be very good at everything that’s necessary, because there’s data science. And, you know, you need to know how to do some programming, front end development, in order to be able to build out tests, you need to be able to talk to people and understand and have empathy for humans. And this is something I have a computer science degree. And I have had to work so hard to be able to not only talk to computers, but also be able to talk to humans. And it’s there are two different skill sets, right. And so, you know, in addition that you need to have some design ability, or at least understand visual design and user experience, as well and have, you know, just a deep empathy for the people who are encountering these challenges on a day to day basis. And then have some business sense about why you would run a test. And you know how that fits into the bigger picture of the goals of the brand you’re running it for.
Jon MacDonald
So, and when it comes down to all of that, generally, we’re set up in a pod structure here. So every client we work with, gets a pod assigned to them. And that pod consists of a senior strategist, a junior strategist, data scientist, a project manager and a front end developer. And then we have floating roles around design and copywriting, things of that sort that can float between clients as needed. But, again, these strategist are are really they’re Jack’s of all trades. And they, each of our strategist has unique skill sets where they go a lot deeper. So for instance, we have strategist who are experts at user testing. And by user testing, I mean that they have a really good understanding of how to ask appropriate questions that aren’t leading. So if you’re doing user testing, this is where you’re going to send people to your site who match your ideal customer profiles, you’re going to ask them to complete some tasks. And while you do that, you’re going to record their screen and their audio. Now, the benefit of this is you get to understand what people are thinking, not just what they’re doing. Now, the data science side of that, the more quantitative data is all going to be around analytics, heat maps, scroll maps, click maps, you know, A B testing is really a quantitative data set. So all of that as numbers base that you can look at and say, and in a trailing fashion, what has happened, but you don’t understand the why behind it until you start talking to people. And so we have experts that are experts in both, but they we have trained them up over the years to be able to do everything, at least a little bit. Right. But again, they’re not going to be experts in the entire process. And we understand that and provide support where we need to there.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, awesome. That’s a comprehensive explanation. Appreciate that. Coming right back to the beginning, then of conversion rate optimisation for a new beginner on the topic. I mentioned to you we have a big audience of Amazon sellers, that would like to build out the brand side direct to consumer. And when they create their website, they’re used to 10 15 20% conversion rates on Amazon, and then all of a sudden, they got 1% on the Shopify site, you know, what should they be looking for as a benchmark for a good conversion rate?
Jon MacDonald
Well, it’s interesting, I get asked this question, probably a dozen times a day, every call that I’m on with, with somebody who wants to work with the good or interviews like this, and, and they always say, you know, John, what’s a good conversion rate, and they’re all looking for a specific number. But the reality is good conversion rate is one that is always improving. And that’s the only way to look at this. You know, it’s interesting. I wrote my second book and came out with it late last year. It’s called opting into optimization. And there’s a whole chapter in there about why you shouldn’t copy or look to your competition. And there’s a great illustration in the front of that chapter that really makes the point. And it’s a gentleman riding a horse in the middle of a horse race. And he’s on his laptop. And he’s leading. And he’s got blinders on. And his horse does, too. And then there’s somebody who’s trailing a little bit behind him, that’s also on his laptop, but that’s looking behind them. And he’s losing, because he’s looking behind him trying to look at what everyone else is doing. And the challenge here is when you start looking at your competitors, you know, you really start picking up what you think is working, but you really have no idea. And if you just took that effort, and put it focused on your own conversion rate, and then just look to improve that 1% Every day, just really just make small, very small, incremental improvements, you will watch that game very quickly. Because conversion rates have a compounding effect, right, you really you can start building on it and growing it over time, by sustained effort. Unfortunately, too many brands try to improve their conversion rate by just applying the latest hack or the latest trick or latest app Shopify app that they see. And they say, oh, everyone else is using this, I should use it too. And we see this all the time in the Shopify ecosystem where this app, you know, several of them, this is done, but they just blow up, everybody’s using them. And then six months later, nobody has it on their site, because it really didn’t work for anybody. Everyone just saw that everyone else had it installed. So like it must be working, and I’ll do it. So really, if you’re really going to focus on what a good conversion rate is, you need to measure yours, your conversion rate be consistent about how you’re measuring it, right, what tool set you’re measuring it in, because every tool sets gonna show you something different. Like you mentioned, there’s a big disparity between Amazon and DTC. Well, even in DTC if you’re looking at it and tracking it through Google Analytics or tools like triple Wale, or any of these other tools that are out there, you’re going to have different numbers. So you need to have a single source of truth, and then just look to come to grow that and show compounding effect, you will really see some impressive gains.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, that’s awesome. What are the first things when you start to work with a new client, they’ve never done any conversion rate optimization as such? What are the first things you usually see the common, you know, failings of, you know, a store that’s really harming their conversion rate?
Jon MacDonald
Yeah, two things. One is they’re talking about themselves a lot. And instead of focusing on the needs of the consumer, and this is a great thing that Amazon does, and why it converts so high is, it’s 100%, geared on solving the problem so that the consumer has, they start searching for a product on there they think is going to solve their problem. And then they can easily compare options and deduce is this going to solve my problem or not? Very quickly. The problem, you go to a direct to consumer ecommerce site. And the first thing that happens is brands start talking about themselves, they have things like about us and the navigation, our press, they start putting all these quotes up about how great they are or video from the founder or about their story. And I’m like, Look, it’s a consumer there. I’m only at your site for two reasons. And this is the only two reasons in over a decade of optimization that we’ve heard from consumers that they’re on an e commerce website, they have a pain or a need, that they are looking to solve. And something led them to believe that your brand can help solve that pain or need. Maybe it was an ad you ran or referral, something they saw on social, right. But something said, Oh, I have that pain, too. I bet these guys can help me. So they go to your site. Once they’re at your site, they want to convert as quickly and easily as possible, and get on with their lives. They’re not there to learn about your brand. They’re not there to do anything other than solve the problem that they think you can help them with. But so many brands just feel like they have to tell the world their story. Now, I’m not suggesting that brand story isn’t important. It is it’s just not important. Right up front, like consumers think that it is. Season it brands think that it is right. So my whole point on this is that brands really need to take a step back and say how can I help solve the consumers pain or need and make sure that I’m communicating that there’s a good fit here, and what makes a good fit and then work your brand’s story in a supporting fashion to that, right. Okay. Hey, great, I’m going to tell you why. On the product detail page, this is going to help solve a particular pain. And as the founder, I’m going to put a video on there that tells you why I started the company because I had that pain too. And here’s what led me to the solution. And now I’m offering that to you as well, that is so much more powerful than me getting on the homepage and saying, you know, oh, well, here’s my story. I’ve been doing this for 12 years, and you know, whatever it might be, right. So that’s one of the first things the second thing is that consumers just aren’t talking or brands just aren’t talking to their consumers. They aren’t interviewing them, they’re not asking enough questions. They’re looking inward. And it’s interesting. I’m a firm believer that you can’t read the label from inside the jar. And if you are so close to your website, you have no idea what it’s like for a new to file customer. So if you’re a brand, and you know, all of your products, you know, the categories, you know, why you want to sell something, and how to navigate your website, because you probably help had a big hand in putting it together. You’re not equipped to understand what a consumer is looking to accomplish. And so you really need to go out and talk to those consumers so that when they come to your website, you know, they’re giving you that fresh perspective, and you’ll be able to meet their needs.
Ben Donovan
And this is why I love your content, because it kind of goes against the grain sometimes because, you know, for me, for a lot of people, I think, you know, we feel like about us needs to be one of the first things in the menu bar, I’ve heard you say, you know, you shouldn’t even put that in the menu, the top top navigation menu,
Jon MacDonald
not at the top navigation should be how you’re solving the pain or need of the consumer who’s visiting nine out of 10 times that’s going to be product focused. And that’s what’s going to sell.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, let’s talk about that. Because it was you who when I first started you hearing first started hearing you talk about this, it was a Yeah, a mindset shift. Because yeah, I’m like, get the about us in there. Get the link to the blog in there. And you’re like, No, no, no, no, don’t do any of those things. Talk to us about your, you know, your mindset of how you go about that navigational menu, because it’s really important, right? Yeah,
Jon MacDonald
it is very important. Because the first thing a consumer is going to do when they get to your homepage, maybe they’ve clicked that ad or just landed on your site, somehow, the first thing they’re going to do is they’re going to look at your navigation to see orient themselves, right, it’s Wayfinding. And it’s called Wayfinding, for a reason, because you’re helping them find their way around your site. And the reality is, if they are, you know, when I first get to a site, I don’t really want to go to a blog. Right. And that’s, I often look at blog, and I always tell people remove that from your main navigation. Because you the blog is higher up in the funnel than your homepage, it’s going to convert way lower, it’s great for driving traffic getting found for search engine optimization purposes, horrible for conversions. Getting a blog page to convert is is a massive challenge. There are ways to do it and influence that, but it’s still never going to convert as highly as the rest of your site. And that’s okay, because you’re getting people to your site, and then you need to lead them in down that funnel.
Jon MacDonald
But if you put blog up in your main navigation, you’re sending people back up the funnel instead of down. Yeah, so you’re really harming yourself. About us in the navigation again, you as a consumer who just came, I’m worried about me. Right? I’m worried I’m here because I have a problem, and you’re gonna help me solve it. I don’t I’m not ready to learn about you. I’m not interested in you. I’m interested in can your product solve my pain or need? Yep. And that’s just the reality of the situation now, is that does that matter as a reassurance tool? Okay, I have found as a consumer, that your main navigation has product categories that are going to be helpful for me. I’m going to dive deeper now and click on one of those categories and see what products are available. Hopefully you have some filtering some ways to help me kind of even narrow that down more, right? Once I’ve done that, I’m looking at the product. Now, reassurance is really important. The reassurance that you’re going to be helpful, should I have a problem that you have a brand I want to give my money to? That you stand for the same things I stand for? Right? So maybe that’s where, you know, being things like a B Corp or one for 1% for the planet. So are any of those type of things? Maybe those things are things I care about, but at the very least, they’re signals that I’m doing business with somebody that I would want to be doing business with? Right.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, you bring up a good point about, we talk about a lot the idea of charitable giving, you know, we want to feel like we do something good for the community. But it’s another debate is where does that belong? Where does that info belong to someone actually care? Does it help conversions? You know, if, of course, you would hope that someone’s doing it for good reasons. But if they, you know, they want to know that it’s going to boost conversions as well, like, does it? What have you seen?
Jon MacDonald
I’ve always thought that and consumers do too, we find in our user testing that things like 1% for the planet, are the easy button. Even like product, red, you know, apples huge with that, but it’s a cause they believe in but a lot of brands will do these types of, of simple things where they can just say, oh, you know, I’m just gonna give 1% of our profits, and be done with it, right. And they think that that’s going to help sell more products, that’s clearly almost always clearly why they’re doing it. If you do something that is a little deeper, like a B Corp, where you have to go through a certification process, and you have to have some core tenants that you are operating by sustainability. You know, you’re putting people in Planet above profits, that really is something that speaks more to consumers, and, and is valuable. But all of these are really trust signals, right? That’s the best way to think about it. And trust signals are great to sprinkle throughout your site. You know, if you go and look at a footer, for instance, this is a spot that most brands forget about and treat as an afterthought. But most consumers go there. A – when they have a problem, they immediately go down and look at the footer for how do I solve my problem. And if you don’t have trust signals, they’re they’re already on shaky ground because they have a problem, right? So you want to kind of put them at ease at that point. It’s also pre purchase, a lot of people will go to the footer and say, Okay, if I purchase, do I know I can get a hold of this brand? Are they forthcoming with their phone number, their email address their physical address, we call that the trust trifecta. If you have all three of those, you are immediately disarming most trust concerns. Because you’re saying, I’m right here, I’m not going to go away. I’m not some fly by night operation. I’m not going to take your money and run if you have an issue, here’s how you can get a hold of me. And that matters.
Ben Donovan
Do you have any solutions for startup ecommerce brands that maybe don’t have a physical shop that maybe don’t want to put their phone number on the internet? What do you do in that scenario?
Jon MacDonald
Well, phone numbers are actually pretty easy to come by now, in a way, you know, you could go set up a Google Voice number. And it’s included if you have Google workspace, you know, so those types of things are pretty easy. And, you know, or we use a service called Ruby receptionists here in the United States that it’s like 25 bucks a month, and they answer our phone and then take a message or patch it through to somebody’s cell phone, if it makes sense. And so those type of customer support things can go a long way. And if you just get someone friendly to answer the phone for you know, I mean, it really it’s it’s pretty inexpensive. And that goes a long way to the consumer, even if they can’t get it resolved right away. They at least know I’ve been heard. I’m in line somebody’s gonna get back to me. And then email, you know, of course, easy one to add on there and physical address, I promise you, nobody’s going to show up. You know, that put your warehouse? Put a PO box. That’s okay. I don’t know if that’s the same over overseas, but in the United States, you know, okay. So, you know, the reality here is that the negatives are very, very low, and the positives, far outweigh them. So it really makes sense to try to do it.
Ben Donovan
It’s interesting, you’re talking when I say what are some of the mistakes? What should people do? I’m thinking, put this button here, but that button there, you know, you’re coming at it from a very bigger, you know, top level kind of mindset that this is so much more about messaging and, you know, communication. And is there a point where you get into the weeds of this button goes there and the color of that button, or is that just missing the point?
Jon MacDonald
Well, yes. When we work with brands we do eventually get down to that level. The problem is, is that there’s a million CRO checklists out there that are all saying change this, do this do that. But they’re just generic. It’s not based on your visitors your site’s data And that’s the only way to really meaningfully and sustainably impact your conversions and your online sales is to focus on what your consumers want. And understand that, and then base your changes on those. Just looking at a checklist and saying, hey, you know, don’t do this, don’t do this in very specific ways. You know, unfortunately, the number of brands that have come to us and said, hey, you know, we’ve been trying to do our own optimization, and we’ve done all these best practices. The reality is, they don’t change their thinking at all. So they always end up at the same place. So that’s why, you know, I wrote the latest book, it’s all about how you should be thinking it’s not as tactical. It’s more about here’s nine key tenants that you need to really be paying attention to. And if you follow these, I think I call them like laws throughout the book. If you follow these laws, you will, you’ll have a lot more ability to make decisions about what should be changed on your site. And it will have a much meaningful, much more meaningful impact.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, awesome. Yeah, we’ll leave a link to the book down in the in the show notes in the description so people can pick that up. I’ve actually I’ve got on my Kindle I, I’ve read. I’ve been so slack with reading in the last few months. I can’t remember if I’m halfway through or if I’ve finished. I just got so busy that I haven’t I haven’t picked it up in a while, which is shameful. But I did. I did buy it when you when you launched it. It’s it’s a great resource. Definitely. So we’ll link to that. Talk to us about your experience with some of these bigger, you know, from sort of the beginner side, you know, you would work with some some huge brands, Xerox, Adobe, you mentioned, telegraph economist. Talk to us about how, how different that is maybe to start at ecommerce site because a lot of that wouldn’t even be ecommerce, right? That’s media content. How was that different?
Jon MacDonald
Right? So conversion optimization really applies to anytime there’s a conversion point. So like with the telegraph, we helped optimize their paywall. So after you read a couple of articles, in a given timeframe, you hit a paywall. And then what’s the experience like for consumers from there, nobody likes to hit a paywall. Everyone tries to get around it. There’s so many plugins that help you there’s you know, nobody, there’s no industry around not not having to deal with paywalls. But these publications, that’s how they make their their money, right. And so they want you to convert just as much as you don’t want to have a paywall. Nobody wants to have a paywall. So how do you get around it? How do you make that a good experience for consumers? And that’s really what we focused on.
Jon MacDonald
What we found in our research is most consumers are ok with a paywall, when they realize the value of what they’ve been reading, yeah, so how do you communicate that value? How do you continue to provide value and reassure them that they’re going to continue to get that value? And make it worth their investment? And then how do you make it so easy, that they really don’t have to think about, you know, every time they come back to the site, or you know, just even getting through that initial conversion point. But again, you know, most people when they think conversion optimization, think ecommerce, and so that’s who we market to. Because, you know, that’s the vast majority of our business, for sure. But you know, even working with brands like Xerox, they’re a great example of how even these massive corporations aren’t thinking in the way they need to be thinking to convert customers. That is the same as small brands.
Jon MacDonald
So the best way to think about this is a story about you know, one day we were working with Xerox and we came in and we had audited their entire experience of how to buy ink and toner through their site. Horrible experience, you could never figure out what printer toner you needed, what was compatible, what the different model numbers were, you would go to their toner page and be just a massive grid of different types. And you’re like, I don’t know which one my printer needs. Like, you had to legit be an IT person who had a list and you say, Okay, this printer in this room takes this toner. And if you didn’t have that you were just out of luck. And so what consumers were doing was they were going to a printer page and they would say Okay, on this printer page, it should tell me what toner I need. And either they had a printer that Xerox no longer sells and they had removed from their e commerce site. So now they were screwed because they couldn’t find the printer. Or the printer page just didn’t list what toner it took because they included toner with the printer. So Xerox was like man, you know, doesn’t really matter. We don’t Need to upsell that. So what we did is we went in and we found out all of this in the in the pain that consumers were going through. And we said, look, I know you want to sell more printers, but nobody wants to buy a printer that they can’t find supplies for very easily. And if you make it really easy to find supplies, you will sell more printers, because the IT folks who are buying these for their businesses will want to say, you know, it was really easy, I’m going to continue to buy these and you’re eliminating that pain point. In addition, you’re leaving so much money on the table that you could be selling in recurring revenue from these supplies. So we came in and we said, okay, let’s let’s overhaul this, this whole shopping experience for supplies and toner. And we sat down and we told them our plan. And the VP that was in the room said, No, we’re not going to make these changes. This is how we’ve always done it. And we just don’t think that it you know, that we should make these changes. I said, Okay, I understand. This is how you’ve always done it. You charged us with coming back with how to increase your online revenues. This is a huge opportunity. And they said, Yeah, you know, I just, I just think you should focus on selling printers. Okay, I get it. Give me a week, I’m going to come back. And I will state my case, and I’ll have data to back it up. And they said, Okay, and so we came back in a week, we had done a bunch of user testing. And what we did is we found it folks who, you know, are in charge of buying printers. And we had them go through the process of trying to find the right supplies for we give them a model of printer. And so just find the right supplies. And the problem was that they kept loot, they kept dropping off, they get frustrated, and they believe. And so what we did was we took the average order value of a supplies purchase, and we had a little ticker in the bottom left hand corner. And every time someone dropped off, we just played highlight reels every time someone dropped off and said, You know what, forget this, I’m frustrated, there’s no way I’m gonna be able to find the right one. We just added that average order value up, and we just for five minutes made a highlight reel that just kept going. We got three minutes into that video, the next week, we went back and the VP said, okay, you don’t have to show me anything else. And this is why it’s just the fact that they don’t have empathy or understanding of that consumer, they were inside the jar, they were too close to their site and their experience and how they’ve always done it. And so you know, even when you work with these large corporations, it’s a lot of the exact same experience as working with the smaller ones, that that mindset shift just needs to happen.
Ben Donovan
You can’t read the label from in the jar, it’s a great takeaway for people to get some help and get someone to go through their site and check it out and give them some feedback, even if it’s just a friend, right? You know, if you can’t afford to employ the, you know, the global sensational surfaces of the good, you know, they could they could get a friend to look through the site and give him some feedback. Is that something you would suggest? Or?
Jon MacDonald
Yeah, for sure, I think I wouldn’t have a friend go, I would try to find, you know, I recommend this to smaller brands all the time, take your laptop to your local coffee shop, pull somebody aside and say I will buy your coffee. If you spend two minutes while the barista make sure your coffee, spend some time looking through my site. And I’m just gonna pull up my browser and I just want to look over your shoulder, I’m gonna give you a direction, hey, go find the best t shirt for you. And then just stop and say, as you’re thinking about these things, can you think can you talk out loud? About why you’re making this decision? Why you click on something like, Oh, I think that this is gonna get me to the T shirts. And then you get to the t shirt collection page? How Why are you choosing those filters? Or is there a filter missing that you wish was there like I need to sort by size and I can’t do that I have to click into every product, you will very quickly understand the pain points from your consumers perspective. And all it costs us a cup of coffee, and maybe an hour of your time to do that. So very, very valuable to start there. But always start by talking to your consumers.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, that’s genius idea very actionable as well. So real, real great thought. Is there anything maybe I haven’t asked that you feel like would be really essential for people to know about the topic?
Jon MacDonald
Yeah, I think we covered a lot today didn’t wait. Yeah, look, I don’t think the answer. The short answer to that is no. But the longer answer is really just find a way to always be talking to your consumers. It works at any stage of your company. Talk to your customer support folks. Ask them what are the number one challenges that people have on the website, log that and then you know, start taking action. And just because you maybe don’t have enough traffic or resources to Do A B testing, you can still optimize your site. There are lots of ways to do that.
Jon MacDonald
Yeah, definitely. And I would highly recommend anybody listening to check out your your use have the tear downs, like recordings of them on your website, right? I think
Jon MacDonald
yeah, so just go to thegood.com. And click on insights. And there’s a whole Encyclopedia of conversion up there from 13 years of content, you can search for any challenge you’re having. And likely we have some related article up there, research report or video. And then the tear downs that we do are in there as well. So you’ll find those I imagine. And you can also find a copy of the book up there for purchase, you can get digital or have it shipped to you. And sign up for a weekly email that we have, where we share the content we produce that week. It’s very rarely to never sales pitch, I think once a year, we run a promotion on there. And that’s, that’s really,
Ben Donovan
yeah, that’s a great newsletter, I get it every week and great content. And like I say, you know that for me, and I’ve gone on about them. But specifically, the tear downs have just taught me so much. Because it’s you doing exactly what you’re talking about. You are talking through what you’re thinking, as you’re going down a website, you know, the first time you’ve seen it, it’s completely fresh to you. And you’ll say, well, that shouldn’t be there. And that’s stupid, and maybe not stupid. But that’s, and it’s, yeah, just to hear how your brain works. I’ve just learned so much from it. So highly recommend everyone, check them out. And we will link up to all of that. Jon, thanks so much for taking the time out. I know you’re super busy and traveling loads. So yeah, I really appreciate you coming on the show today.
Jon MacDonald
Of course. Happy to be here. Appreciate it. Awesome.
Ben Donovan
While guys check out all of the links in the description below. I would highly encourage getting signed up to the newsletter checking John’s book out watching all those tear downs because there’s so much to learn. Thanks for joining us on another episode and we’ll see you in the next episode next week.
Welcome back to another episode of The Brand Builder show. In today’s episode, we’re gonna be talking about all things website optimization, how to improve your conversion rate, so you can make more sales on your website. And to join me to talk about this topic is Jon MacDonald. Jon, welcome to the show.
Jon MacDonald
How are you? Thanks for having me.
Ben Donovan
No, it’s my pleasure. I have been following you for some time. Now, I think I found you when you were doing some tear downs of websites live. And I just thought this content is absolute gold. And I recently got an email from you that talked about your work with the telegraph, which is a huge, you know, media publication, especially here in the UK where I am, and really grabbed my attention. I thought Man, this guy is absolutely crushing it at another level. And so I wanted to get you on the show and ask you about all things conversion rate optimization. Before we dive into the questions, I would love for you to introduce yourself to anybody that doesn’t know who you are, you know, your journey with E commerce and and what you do with your agency right now.
Jon MacDonald
Sure, so founder and CEO at The Good. The good is a conversion rate optimization firm. So we help brands to convert more of their existing visitors into customers. So we don’t do anything with driving traffic, we focus exclusively on on site optimization. We’ve been doing this for over 13 years now. So we were one of the very early players in what is now known as conversion rate optimization. We originally started out as an E commerce development shop, and we did optimization as well. And came to find out very quickly that that is really where we were uniquely skilled. And at the same time, that’s where the demand was for our services. And it was why people were working with us. So we transitioned pretty quickly into just doing optimization. At the time, we call it continual optimization. Now it’s very well known as conversion rate optimization. And yes, so like you mentioned, I work with brands, large and small. Nike, Xerox, Adobe telegraph, The Economist, as well as hundreds of midsize brands over that day, decade or so.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, ultimately, you say we you’re working with a big team now?
Jon MacDonald
Yeah, so I’m headquartered in Portland, Oregon, United States, and we have folks throughout the country, we’re almost entirely US based. We do have some development help overseas that that we work with. But yet the you know, really, it’s a team effort. These days, quite honestly, I’m rarely doing actual client work. I’m mainly, you know, looking forward that that’s how I view you know, we’re at a large enough size that I need to be keeping my eye on where we’re going, what the trends are, wherever been leading the team in that direction, right leading the chart. So in terms of the day to day client work, you know, my goal was always when I started out to hire people that were smarter than me and set them up for success and feel very fortunate that that’s the case.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, awesome. What kind of roles are there in a CRO agency.
Jon MacDonald
Yeah, so this is the interesting part about CRO, you can’t go to school for it, there’s no school for, it’s, it’s really interesting. It’s such a diverse and unique skill set. And you need to be able to pull in several different items. And this is where the vast majority of general marketing or E commerce firms who all list conversion rate optimization as maybe a bullet point on their their list of services. This is where I start to call BS, because you can’t have one person on your team that you say is your CRO expert, it’s really, really hard to be very good at everything that’s necessary, because there’s data science. And, you know, you need to know how to do some programming, front end development, in order to be able to build out tests, you need to be able to talk to people and understand and have empathy for humans. And this is something I have a computer science degree. And I have had to work so hard to be able to not only talk to computers, but also be able to talk to humans. And it’s there are two different skill sets, right. And so, you know, in addition that you need to have some design ability, or at least understand visual design and user experience, as well and have, you know, just a deep empathy for the people who are encountering these challenges on a day to day basis. And then have some business sense about why you would run a test. And you know how that fits into the bigger picture of the goals of the brand you’re running it for.
Jon MacDonald
So, and when it comes down to all of that, generally, we’re set up in a pod structure here. So every client we work with, gets a pod assigned to them. And that pod consists of a senior strategist, a junior strategist, data scientist, a project manager and a front end developer. And then we have floating roles around design and copywriting, things of that sort that can float between clients as needed. But, again, these strategist are are really they’re Jack’s of all trades. And they, each of our strategist has unique skill sets where they go a lot deeper. So for instance, we have strategist who are experts at user testing. And by user testing, I mean that they have a really good understanding of how to ask appropriate questions that aren’t leading. So if you’re doing user testing, this is where you’re going to send people to your site who match your ideal customer profiles, you’re going to ask them to complete some tasks. And while you do that, you’re going to record their screen and their audio. Now, the benefit of this is you get to understand what people are thinking, not just what they’re doing. Now, the data science side of that, the more quantitative data is all going to be around analytics, heat maps, scroll maps, click maps, you know, A B testing is really a quantitative data set. So all of that as numbers base that you can look at and say, and in a trailing fashion, what has happened, but you don’t understand the why behind it until you start talking to people. And so we have experts that are experts in both, but they we have trained them up over the years to be able to do everything, at least a little bit. Right. But again, they’re not going to be experts in the entire process. And we understand that and provide support where we need to there.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, awesome. That’s a comprehensive explanation. Appreciate that. Coming right back to the beginning, then of conversion rate optimisation for a new beginner on the topic. I mentioned to you we have a big audience of Amazon sellers, that would like to build out the brand side direct to consumer. And when they create their website, they’re used to 10 15 20% conversion rates on Amazon, and then all of a sudden, they got 1% on the Shopify site, you know, what should they be looking for as a benchmark for a good conversion rate?
Jon MacDonald
Well, it’s interesting, I get asked this question, probably a dozen times a day, every call that I’m on with, with somebody who wants to work with the good or interviews like this, and, and they always say, you know, John, what’s a good conversion rate, and they’re all looking for a specific number. But the reality is good conversion rate is one that is always improving. And that’s the only way to look at this. You know, it’s interesting. I wrote my second book and came out with it late last year. It’s called opting into optimization. And there’s a whole chapter in there about why you shouldn’t copy or look to your competition. And there’s a great illustration in the front of that chapter that really makes the point. And it’s a gentleman riding a horse in the middle of a horse race. And he’s on his laptop. And he’s leading. And he’s got blinders on. And his horse does, too. And then there’s somebody who’s trailing a little bit behind him, that’s also on his laptop, but that’s looking behind them. And he’s losing, because he’s looking behind him trying to look at what everyone else is doing. And the challenge here is when you start looking at your competitors, you know, you really start picking up what you think is working, but you really have no idea. And if you just took that effort, and put it focused on your own conversion rate, and then just look to improve that 1% Every day, just really just make small, very small, incremental improvements, you will watch that game very quickly. Because conversion rates have a compounding effect, right, you really you can start building on it and growing it over time, by sustained effort. Unfortunately, too many brands try to improve their conversion rate by just applying the latest hack or the latest trick or latest app Shopify app that they see. And they say, oh, everyone else is using this, I should use it too. And we see this all the time in the Shopify ecosystem where this app, you know, several of them, this is done, but they just blow up, everybody’s using them. And then six months later, nobody has it on their site, because it really didn’t work for anybody. Everyone just saw that everyone else had it installed. So like it must be working, and I’ll do it. So really, if you’re really going to focus on what a good conversion rate is, you need to measure yours, your conversion rate be consistent about how you’re measuring it, right, what tool set you’re measuring it in, because every tool sets gonna show you something different. Like you mentioned, there’s a big disparity between Amazon and DTC. Well, even in DTC if you’re looking at it and tracking it through Google Analytics or tools like triple Wale, or any of these other tools that are out there, you’re going to have different numbers. So you need to have a single source of truth, and then just look to come to grow that and show compounding effect, you will really see some impressive gains.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, that’s awesome. What are the first things when you start to work with a new client, they’ve never done any conversion rate optimization as such? What are the first things you usually see the common, you know, failings of, you know, a store that’s really harming their conversion rate?
Jon MacDonald
Yeah, two things. One is they’re talking about themselves a lot. And instead of focusing on the needs of the consumer, and this is a great thing that Amazon does, and why it converts so high is, it’s 100%, geared on solving the problem so that the consumer has, they start searching for a product on there they think is going to solve their problem. And then they can easily compare options and deduce is this going to solve my problem or not? Very quickly. The problem, you go to a direct to consumer ecommerce site. And the first thing that happens is brands start talking about themselves, they have things like about us and the navigation, our press, they start putting all these quotes up about how great they are or video from the founder or about their story. And I’m like, Look, it’s a consumer there. I’m only at your site for two reasons. And this is the only two reasons in over a decade of optimization that we’ve heard from consumers that they’re on an e commerce website, they have a pain or a need, that they are looking to solve. And something led them to believe that your brand can help solve that pain or need. Maybe it was an ad you ran or referral, something they saw on social, right. But something said, Oh, I have that pain, too. I bet these guys can help me. So they go to your site. Once they’re at your site, they want to convert as quickly and easily as possible, and get on with their lives. They’re not there to learn about your brand. They’re not there to do anything other than solve the problem that they think you can help them with. But so many brands just feel like they have to tell the world their story. Now, I’m not suggesting that brand story isn’t important. It is it’s just not important. Right up front, like consumers think that it is. Season it brands think that it is right. So my whole point on this is that brands really need to take a step back and say how can I help solve the consumers pain or need and make sure that I’m communicating that there’s a good fit here, and what makes a good fit and then work your brand’s story in a supporting fashion to that, right. Okay. Hey, great, I’m going to tell you why. On the product detail page, this is going to help solve a particular pain. And as the founder, I’m going to put a video on there that tells you why I started the company because I had that pain too. And here’s what led me to the solution. And now I’m offering that to you as well, that is so much more powerful than me getting on the homepage and saying, you know, oh, well, here’s my story. I’ve been doing this for 12 years, and you know, whatever it might be, right. So that’s one of the first things the second thing is that consumers just aren’t talking or brands just aren’t talking to their consumers. They aren’t interviewing them, they’re not asking enough questions. They’re looking inward. And it’s interesting. I’m a firm believer that you can’t read the label from inside the jar. And if you are so close to your website, you have no idea what it’s like for a new to file customer. So if you’re a brand, and you know, all of your products, you know, the categories, you know, why you want to sell something, and how to navigate your website, because you probably help had a big hand in putting it together. You’re not equipped to understand what a consumer is looking to accomplish. And so you really need to go out and talk to those consumers so that when they come to your website, you know, they’re giving you that fresh perspective, and you’ll be able to meet their needs.
Ben Donovan
And this is why I love your content, because it kind of goes against the grain sometimes because, you know, for me, for a lot of people, I think, you know, we feel like about us needs to be one of the first things in the menu bar, I’ve heard you say, you know, you shouldn’t even put that in the menu, the top top navigation menu,
Jon MacDonald
not at the top navigation should be how you’re solving the pain or need of the consumer who’s visiting nine out of 10 times that’s going to be product focused. And that’s what’s going to sell.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, let’s talk about that. Because it was you who when I first started you hearing first started hearing you talk about this, it was a Yeah, a mindset shift. Because yeah, I’m like, get the about us in there. Get the link to the blog in there. And you’re like, No, no, no, no, don’t do any of those things. Talk to us about your, you know, your mindset of how you go about that navigational menu, because it’s really important, right? Yeah,
Jon MacDonald
it is very important. Because the first thing a consumer is going to do when they get to your homepage, maybe they’ve clicked that ad or just landed on your site, somehow, the first thing they’re going to do is they’re going to look at your navigation to see orient themselves, right, it’s Wayfinding. And it’s called Wayfinding, for a reason, because you’re helping them find their way around your site. And the reality is, if they are, you know, when I first get to a site, I don’t really want to go to a blog. Right. And that’s, I often look at blog, and I always tell people remove that from your main navigation. Because you the blog is higher up in the funnel than your homepage, it’s going to convert way lower, it’s great for driving traffic getting found for search engine optimization purposes, horrible for conversions. Getting a blog page to convert is is a massive challenge. There are ways to do it and influence that, but it’s still never going to convert as highly as the rest of your site. And that’s okay, because you’re getting people to your site, and then you need to lead them in down that funnel.
Jon MacDonald
But if you put blog up in your main navigation, you’re sending people back up the funnel instead of down. Yeah, so you’re really harming yourself. About us in the navigation again, you as a consumer who just came, I’m worried about me. Right? I’m worried I’m here because I have a problem, and you’re gonna help me solve it. I don’t I’m not ready to learn about you. I’m not interested in you. I’m interested in can your product solve my pain or need? Yep. And that’s just the reality of the situation now, is that does that matter as a reassurance tool? Okay, I have found as a consumer, that your main navigation has product categories that are going to be helpful for me. I’m going to dive deeper now and click on one of those categories and see what products are available. Hopefully you have some filtering some ways to help me kind of even narrow that down more, right? Once I’ve done that, I’m looking at the product. Now, reassurance is really important. The reassurance that you’re going to be helpful, should I have a problem that you have a brand I want to give my money to? That you stand for the same things I stand for? Right? So maybe that’s where, you know, being things like a B Corp or one for 1% for the planet. So are any of those type of things? Maybe those things are things I care about, but at the very least, they’re signals that I’m doing business with somebody that I would want to be doing business with? Right.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, you bring up a good point about, we talk about a lot the idea of charitable giving, you know, we want to feel like we do something good for the community. But it’s another debate is where does that belong? Where does that info belong to someone actually care? Does it help conversions? You know, if, of course, you would hope that someone’s doing it for good reasons. But if they, you know, they want to know that it’s going to boost conversions as well, like, does it? What have you seen?
Jon MacDonald
I’ve always thought that and consumers do too, we find in our user testing that things like 1% for the planet, are the easy button. Even like product, red, you know, apples huge with that, but it’s a cause they believe in but a lot of brands will do these types of, of simple things where they can just say, oh, you know, I’m just gonna give 1% of our profits, and be done with it, right. And they think that that’s going to help sell more products, that’s clearly almost always clearly why they’re doing it. If you do something that is a little deeper, like a B Corp, where you have to go through a certification process, and you have to have some core tenants that you are operating by sustainability. You know, you’re putting people in Planet above profits, that really is something that speaks more to consumers, and, and is valuable. But all of these are really trust signals, right? That’s the best way to think about it. And trust signals are great to sprinkle throughout your site. You know, if you go and look at a footer, for instance, this is a spot that most brands forget about and treat as an afterthought. But most consumers go there. A – when they have a problem, they immediately go down and look at the footer for how do I solve my problem. And if you don’t have trust signals, they’re they’re already on shaky ground because they have a problem, right? So you want to kind of put them at ease at that point. It’s also pre purchase, a lot of people will go to the footer and say, Okay, if I purchase, do I know I can get a hold of this brand? Are they forthcoming with their phone number, their email address their physical address, we call that the trust trifecta. If you have all three of those, you are immediately disarming most trust concerns. Because you’re saying, I’m right here, I’m not going to go away. I’m not some fly by night operation. I’m not going to take your money and run if you have an issue, here’s how you can get a hold of me. And that matters.
Ben Donovan
Do you have any solutions for startup ecommerce brands that maybe don’t have a physical shop that maybe don’t want to put their phone number on the internet? What do you do in that scenario?
Jon MacDonald
Well, phone numbers are actually pretty easy to come by now, in a way, you know, you could go set up a Google Voice number. And it’s included if you have Google workspace, you know, so those types of things are pretty easy. And, you know, or we use a service called Ruby receptionists here in the United States that it’s like 25 bucks a month, and they answer our phone and then take a message or patch it through to somebody’s cell phone, if it makes sense. And so those type of customer support things can go a long way. And if you just get someone friendly to answer the phone for you know, I mean, it really it’s it’s pretty inexpensive. And that goes a long way to the consumer, even if they can’t get it resolved right away. They at least know I’ve been heard. I’m in line somebody’s gonna get back to me. And then email, you know, of course, easy one to add on there and physical address, I promise you, nobody’s going to show up. You know, that put your warehouse? Put a PO box. That’s okay. I don’t know if that’s the same over overseas, but in the United States, you know, okay. So, you know, the reality here is that the negatives are very, very low, and the positives, far outweigh them. So it really makes sense to try to do it.
Ben Donovan
It’s interesting, you’re talking when I say what are some of the mistakes? What should people do? I’m thinking, put this button here, but that button there, you know, you’re coming at it from a very bigger, you know, top level kind of mindset that this is so much more about messaging and, you know, communication. And is there a point where you get into the weeds of this button goes there and the color of that button, or is that just missing the point?
Jon MacDonald
Well, yes. When we work with brands we do eventually get down to that level. The problem is, is that there’s a million CRO checklists out there that are all saying change this, do this do that. But they’re just generic. It’s not based on your visitors your site’s data And that’s the only way to really meaningfully and sustainably impact your conversions and your online sales is to focus on what your consumers want. And understand that, and then base your changes on those. Just looking at a checklist and saying, hey, you know, don’t do this, don’t do this in very specific ways. You know, unfortunately, the number of brands that have come to us and said, hey, you know, we’ve been trying to do our own optimization, and we’ve done all these best practices. The reality is, they don’t change their thinking at all. So they always end up at the same place. So that’s why, you know, I wrote the latest book, it’s all about how you should be thinking it’s not as tactical. It’s more about here’s nine key tenants that you need to really be paying attention to. And if you follow these, I think I call them like laws throughout the book. If you follow these laws, you will, you’ll have a lot more ability to make decisions about what should be changed on your site. And it will have a much meaningful, much more meaningful impact.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, awesome. Yeah, we’ll leave a link to the book down in the in the show notes in the description so people can pick that up. I’ve actually I’ve got on my Kindle I, I’ve read. I’ve been so slack with reading in the last few months. I can’t remember if I’m halfway through or if I’ve finished. I just got so busy that I haven’t I haven’t picked it up in a while, which is shameful. But I did. I did buy it when you when you launched it. It’s it’s a great resource. Definitely. So we’ll link to that. Talk to us about your experience with some of these bigger, you know, from sort of the beginner side, you know, you would work with some some huge brands, Xerox, Adobe, you mentioned, telegraph economist. Talk to us about how, how different that is maybe to start at ecommerce site because a lot of that wouldn’t even be ecommerce, right? That’s media content. How was that different?
Jon MacDonald
Right? So conversion optimization really applies to anytime there’s a conversion point. So like with the telegraph, we helped optimize their paywall. So after you read a couple of articles, in a given timeframe, you hit a paywall. And then what’s the experience like for consumers from there, nobody likes to hit a paywall. Everyone tries to get around it. There’s so many plugins that help you there’s you know, nobody, there’s no industry around not not having to deal with paywalls. But these publications, that’s how they make their their money, right. And so they want you to convert just as much as you don’t want to have a paywall. Nobody wants to have a paywall. So how do you get around it? How do you make that a good experience for consumers? And that’s really what we focused on.
Jon MacDonald
What we found in our research is most consumers are ok with a paywall, when they realize the value of what they’ve been reading, yeah, so how do you communicate that value? How do you continue to provide value and reassure them that they’re going to continue to get that value? And make it worth their investment? And then how do you make it so easy, that they really don’t have to think about, you know, every time they come back to the site, or you know, just even getting through that initial conversion point. But again, you know, most people when they think conversion optimization, think ecommerce, and so that’s who we market to. Because, you know, that’s the vast majority of our business, for sure. But you know, even working with brands like Xerox, they’re a great example of how even these massive corporations aren’t thinking in the way they need to be thinking to convert customers. That is the same as small brands.
Jon MacDonald
So the best way to think about this is a story about you know, one day we were working with Xerox and we came in and we had audited their entire experience of how to buy ink and toner through their site. Horrible experience, you could never figure out what printer toner you needed, what was compatible, what the different model numbers were, you would go to their toner page and be just a massive grid of different types. And you’re like, I don’t know which one my printer needs. Like, you had to legit be an IT person who had a list and you say, Okay, this printer in this room takes this toner. And if you didn’t have that you were just out of luck. And so what consumers were doing was they were going to a printer page and they would say Okay, on this printer page, it should tell me what toner I need. And either they had a printer that Xerox no longer sells and they had removed from their e commerce site. So now they were screwed because they couldn’t find the printer. Or the printer page just didn’t list what toner it took because they included toner with the printer. So Xerox was like man, you know, doesn’t really matter. We don’t Need to upsell that. So what we did is we went in and we found out all of this in the in the pain that consumers were going through. And we said, look, I know you want to sell more printers, but nobody wants to buy a printer that they can’t find supplies for very easily. And if you make it really easy to find supplies, you will sell more printers, because the IT folks who are buying these for their businesses will want to say, you know, it was really easy, I’m going to continue to buy these and you’re eliminating that pain point. In addition, you’re leaving so much money on the table that you could be selling in recurring revenue from these supplies. So we came in and we said, okay, let’s let’s overhaul this, this whole shopping experience for supplies and toner. And we sat down and we told them our plan. And the VP that was in the room said, No, we’re not going to make these changes. This is how we’ve always done it. And we just don’t think that it you know, that we should make these changes. I said, Okay, I understand. This is how you’ve always done it. You charged us with coming back with how to increase your online revenues. This is a huge opportunity. And they said, Yeah, you know, I just, I just think you should focus on selling printers. Okay, I get it. Give me a week, I’m going to come back. And I will state my case, and I’ll have data to back it up. And they said, Okay, and so we came back in a week, we had done a bunch of user testing. And what we did is we found it folks who, you know, are in charge of buying printers. And we had them go through the process of trying to find the right supplies for we give them a model of printer. And so just find the right supplies. And the problem was that they kept loot, they kept dropping off, they get frustrated, and they believe. And so what we did was we took the average order value of a supplies purchase, and we had a little ticker in the bottom left hand corner. And every time someone dropped off, we just played highlight reels every time someone dropped off and said, You know what, forget this, I’m frustrated, there’s no way I’m gonna be able to find the right one. We just added that average order value up, and we just for five minutes made a highlight reel that just kept going. We got three minutes into that video, the next week, we went back and the VP said, okay, you don’t have to show me anything else. And this is why it’s just the fact that they don’t have empathy or understanding of that consumer, they were inside the jar, they were too close to their site and their experience and how they’ve always done it. And so you know, even when you work with these large corporations, it’s a lot of the exact same experience as working with the smaller ones, that that mindset shift just needs to happen.
Ben Donovan
You can’t read the label from in the jar, it’s a great takeaway for people to get some help and get someone to go through their site and check it out and give them some feedback, even if it’s just a friend, right? You know, if you can’t afford to employ the, you know, the global sensational surfaces of the good, you know, they could they could get a friend to look through the site and give him some feedback. Is that something you would suggest? Or?
Jon MacDonald
Yeah, for sure, I think I wouldn’t have a friend go, I would try to find, you know, I recommend this to smaller brands all the time, take your laptop to your local coffee shop, pull somebody aside and say I will buy your coffee. If you spend two minutes while the barista make sure your coffee, spend some time looking through my site. And I’m just gonna pull up my browser and I just want to look over your shoulder, I’m gonna give you a direction, hey, go find the best t shirt for you. And then just stop and say, as you’re thinking about these things, can you think can you talk out loud? About why you’re making this decision? Why you click on something like, Oh, I think that this is gonna get me to the T shirts. And then you get to the t shirt collection page? How Why are you choosing those filters? Or is there a filter missing that you wish was there like I need to sort by size and I can’t do that I have to click into every product, you will very quickly understand the pain points from your consumers perspective. And all it costs us a cup of coffee, and maybe an hour of your time to do that. So very, very valuable to start there. But always start by talking to your consumers.
Ben Donovan
Yeah, that’s genius idea very actionable as well. So real, real great thought. Is there anything maybe I haven’t asked that you feel like would be really essential for people to know about the topic?
Jon MacDonald
Yeah, I think we covered a lot today didn’t wait. Yeah, look, I don’t think the answer. The short answer to that is no. But the longer answer is really just find a way to always be talking to your consumers. It works at any stage of your company. Talk to your customer support folks. Ask them what are the number one challenges that people have on the website, log that and then you know, start taking action. And just because you maybe don’t have enough traffic or resources to Do A B testing, you can still optimize your site. There are lots of ways to do that.
Jon MacDonald
Yeah, definitely. And I would highly recommend anybody listening to check out your your use have the tear downs, like recordings of them on your website, right? I think
Jon MacDonald
yeah, so just go to thegood.com. And click on insights. And there’s a whole Encyclopedia of conversion up there from 13 years of content, you can search for any challenge you’re having. And likely we have some related article up there, research report or video. And then the tear downs that we do are in there as well. So you’ll find those I imagine. And you can also find a copy of the book up there for purchase, you can get digital or have it shipped to you. And sign up for a weekly email that we have, where we share the content we produce that week. It’s very rarely to never sales pitch, I think once a year, we run a promotion on there. And that’s, that’s really,
Ben Donovan
yeah, that’s a great newsletter, I get it every week and great content. And like I say, you know that for me, and I’ve gone on about them. But specifically, the tear downs have just taught me so much. Because it’s you doing exactly what you’re talking about. You are talking through what you’re thinking, as you’re going down a website, you know, the first time you’ve seen it, it’s completely fresh to you. And you’ll say, well, that shouldn’t be there. And that’s stupid, and maybe not stupid. But that’s, and it’s, yeah, just to hear how your brain works. I’ve just learned so much from it. So highly recommend everyone, check them out. And we will link up to all of that. Jon, thanks so much for taking the time out. I know you’re super busy and traveling loads. So yeah, I really appreciate you coming on the show today.
Jon MacDonald
Of course. Happy to be here. Appreciate it. Awesome.
Ben Donovan
While guys check out all of the links in the description below. I would highly encourage getting signed up to the newsletter checking John’s book out watching all those tear downs because there’s so much to learn. Thanks for joining us on another episode and we’ll see you in the next episode next week.
