Drive and Convert

Announcer: [00:00:00] You're listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast about helping online brands to build a better ecommerce growth engine with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow.

Hey Ryan, have you ever felt frustrated by unexpected fees when shopping online.

Ryan Garrow: No, never. That's weird. Yeah.

Jon MacDonald: It's a weird question, right? Look, it's such a common experience and it so quickly turns customers away that I even recently encountered this while trying to purchase concert tickets.

I went through the long process of selecting seats, looking at all the views, doing all that stuff, got the checkout, had the countdown timer, I was all stressed out about it, finally got it done, and then I got hit with exorbitant convenience fees. It almost doubled the price, needless to say, I abandoned that purchase despite the time investment, et cetera.

And I'll put in air quotes, [00:01:00] the convenience of having gone through that process that I was paying for. But I think this really highlighted a critical aspect of digital experiences for me, and that's priming and expectation setting. Leave it to me to have a bad experience online and bring it to a positive.

Psychological principles and make a

Ryan Garrow: podcast out of it

Jon MacDonald: and then make a podcast out of it. Nerd central here, but

Ryan Garrow: oh man, those expectations are the worst. Like I think almost everybody listening has done the same thing. I almost bought tickets to What was it last week? My wife wanted to go to book of mormon and it's coming to portland I was like, oh, I got an adam metaphor.

Let me go find that click the ad got to the end and then I picked the seats and then they're like Oh, it's not even on sale yet. And these may or may not be the seats you get, but they'll be as good. Or I'm like, I tried to find where the real tickets were instead of these secondary site that I accidentally, I felt embarrassed because I went to a secondary site thinking it was a real, I'm like, ah, man, some [00:02:00] expectations.

Meta did that. Is that his algorithm is really good. Because I've been listening to my wife talk about wanting to go to Book of Mormon. Love it. I'm assuming we're talking today about priming and expectation settings to help drive conversions, I'm guessing.

Jon MacDonald: Yes, spot on. Look at your deduction capabilities are prime right now.

I appreciate that. Yeah, look, there's nothing more frustrating than feeling like a company is giving you that bait and switch and user experience design. We call this poor priming and expectation setting. It's really a violation of one of the six Heuristics of digital experience optimization. As a reminder here, heuristics of those mental shortcuts, the use to solve problems quickly and effectively, that we all take these shortcuts.

I know we've talked about it on the show a handful of times, but knowing that our brains are wired to take shortcuts and make these quick decisions. You can imagine how heuristics play that critical role and how customers navigate and just perceive digital experiences.

Ryan Garrow: [00:03:00] Yeah, just even saying the word heuristics, I go back to that podcast.

There's a shortcut there that takes me there. But I'm priming an expectation setting. I understand expectation, but the priming piece, I guess you'll have to explain that piece of heuristics and how that works here.

Jon MacDonald: The concert ticket buying story tells almost everything you need to know about that.

Because it can either set people up for success or complete failure. And it does that by clarifying how the interface will perform, indicating what actions users should take, and then managing those user expectations along that journey. So digital experiences that adhere to this may apply tactics like it.

Explicitly mentioning free shipping early in the journey or reducing cart abandonment rates or sharing estimated delivery dates to manage customer expectations, or just saying, Hey, you know what, you're going to pay double for this ticket because we want to get rich too. Just say that up front and I probably would have been okay with your,

Ryan Garrow: I expect you to charge me 150 [00:04:00] bucks.

That's great. So convenient. But something else stuck out just now, because you said that there were six heuristics for digital experience optimization. We only mentioned one. What are the other five? You might have told me before, but you don't have to remind me. Yeah.

Jon MacDonald: When we talked about heuristics prior, we did talk about this briefly, and I'm not expecting you to have memorized all six of these by any means.

No, that's your job. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's what I'm here for. So just call me next time you forget. But look, our team is the good has identified six of these shortcuts, right? And any site Whether it's software as a service or ecommerce should be considering each step of these in their digital experience.

All six of those include, of course, priming and expectation setting. Easy win right there. You should get an A for getting that one because that's what we're talking about today, right? Trust and authority. Ease, how hard is something to do, right? Benefits and unique selling points. Making sure those are clear.

Directional guidance. Helping people through that journey. Making it easy for them to [00:05:00] get to the next step. And then six is incentives, right? So given them that little push over the edge, what that might be, I think in the future, we could probably do an episode on each, but today we'll just focus on that primary expectation setting and we can fix those damn convenience fees while we're at it.

Ryan Garrow: I sure hope so. Hopefully all your ticket companies listen to our podcast and then let us work on your sites.

Jon MacDonald: We have Taylor Swift on our side, I'm told. So that's a positive. That's

Ryan Garrow: true. Taylor, give me a call. We got to fix this. And my daughter's won an autograph. So if I'm, if I've got my site, other than a convenience fee, that's ridiculous, how do I know I'm violating this heuristic?

Is there some easy things I can see without thinking too hard?

Jon MacDonald: Yeah. Before you can start to address any of these heuristics to improve that digital experience, you have to understand if. When and where users are getting stuck and to understand if your digital experience is violating this priming and expectation heuristic, a great place to start is in user research.

You probably could have guessed that one. It seems like it comes back. [00:06:00] I think I could think of a

Ryan Garrow: jar Starbucks line. I've got all of

Jon MacDonald: that, right? So start talking to your users or just observing their behavior. That's a great place to start. And as you analyze that, look for patterns. So there's patterns like rage clicking.

I know you love that name. Oh, this is the

Ryan Garrow: first time I've heard rage clicking from you, I think. But I know exactly what it

Jon MacDonald: is because I do it. Everyone does it, right? And usually this signifies that experience doesn't provide enough cues, semantics, or even timely feedback to keep you informed.

You're clicking on something and you're like, why is this not working? And here it's not a link at all, maybe. Right? Low directness is the next one. This is an interesting pattern because this can be a sign of unmet expectations, meaning your systems interactions, the navigation or the language don't match the user's mental models of the real world or normal site conventions.

Okay? So you want your site to be direct if you think about it that way, right?

Ryan Garrow: How do I notice low [00:07:00] directness? Like I can't see that in rage clicks.

Jon MacDonald: Yeah. So this is a very one sentence summary of the entire book. Don't make me think. Oh, so read the book. It's this one. Yeah. The reality here is make it easy.

Be direct in what people are supposed to do. We call it low directness because the idea is if I'm looking to do something, I should be able to go right there and directly do it because I have an expectation, right? I want your phone number. Yeah, I want your phone number. I'm going to scroll down to the footer.

I'm not going to click all over your site. And if it's not there, I'm like, Oh God, I got to click around to find this. The worst is you want a company's address. The hack for that every time, if they don't show it anywhere else, it's in their privacy policy because that has to be my law.

Ryan Garrow: Or they've used the Shopify template and haven't filled it in.

It's all caps in brackets address. I'm like,

Jon MacDonald: yes. Which case their lawyer should probably call them.

Announcer: Yeah. You're listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast focused on ecommerce growth. [00:08:00] Your hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate optimization agency that works with ecommerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers. And Ryan Garrow of Logical Position, a digital marketing agency offering pay-per-click management, search engine optimization and website design services to brands of all sizes. If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you.

Jon MacDonald: The third is price sensitivity. Okay, so you're looking for this in that feedback. It often indicates poor priming, right? Because it's unclear or maybe missing elements in that interface that typically guide people to inform them of what to expect next around pricing. So just tell me about that darn convenience fee up front and I've been primed.

But the good news is once you identified all these patterns, you're You can address them with tactics to improve priming and expectation setting. It's not hard. And doing this is a [00:09:00] really ethical way to improve customer sentiment and increase conversions.

Ryan Garrow: Which is what we all want. Now, I obviously am a very visual person, and so in this, can you paint me a picture or give me an example you've worked on where this was obvious to you or became obvious to

Jon MacDonald: Yeah, I have two that come top of mind.

First is with a company called eManual Online. Oh, that's right. We share them as a client. They are the largest repair manual database online, right? Our research revealed that users were confused about how eManual Online delivers the manual. Some are digital downloads, some are physical editions. And because of this mixed delivery message throughout the entire site, customers just didn't know what to trust when they confronted this issue on the website.

They were like do I have to wait for the mail? I'm going to get a download. I have no idea what I'm buying. And so we decided to test out highlighting the delivery methods to clarify that confusion, increase transactions, etc. Not a [00:10:00] surprise, but the clear delivery method language showed a 14 percent lift.

So definitely worth it. Now. To clarify access methods for offline downloads, this resulted in a person and a stronger purchase intent as well. So not only were people converting a higher rate, but they also went directly to purchasing as opposed to clicking around the site a lot more because they felt clear that expectation had been set.

So it's a great example of priming and expectation setting at work. Yeah, the second is with residential furnishings company. No, you've probably heard of Herman Miller, Yeah. In Knoll, I think they're now called Miller Knoll, they merged, and they also own Design Within Reach, or design not within reach, depending on your budget,

Ryan Garrow: your

Jon MacDonald: budget, your financial bracket.

But I will say that Knoll has a range of uniquely crafted and handmade products that you honestly can't find anywhere else. The care and detail that goes into each piece means a lot longer lead times. [00:11:00] Everything's handmade and shipping and delivery just takes longer. So you don't order something from them expect to have it tomorrow.

It can take months. So what we did is we went on the site and we wanted to prime and set that expectation. So we changed the wording from lead time. Eight weeks. Okay. So it was two months to get a product. And it said lead time, eight week consumers looking at that. Like I get what lead time means, but it's very commercial also eight weeks.

Oh my gosh. And then we changed it to made for you ships in eight weeks. Very different. We turned a negative into a positive. We primed them with that. And we said, okay, you guys, we're going to make this just for you. And yeah, it ships in eight weeks, but it's made for you. That makes sense. Now, why it takes that lead time makes it think, wow, they have to just go get it from the warehouse.

It takes forever with somebody walking it to me. What's going on here. But this change had the biggest test win of the year for them in terms of revenue. And it had the benefit of turning that challenge or really long lead time into a compelling conversion [00:12:00] booster around it being made for you or custom made.

Ryan Garrow: Transparently. It sounds like making your checkout button orange instead of blue. When you're talking about that, those words. But is it as simple for a lot of brands to almost wordsmith some of the things on their call to action arena? Not as simple as changing a button color, but thinking through that, that seems like I could help in a lot

Jon MacDonald: of sites.

Oh, without question I can. And I think the reality here is the intent behind the change. Right here. We are trying to set them up. So when they get further into checkout and they're reminded of when this is going to ship to them that they aren't surprised because we have clearly up front told them that it's going to be eight weeks.

But what we did is we changed the language to prime them in a way that made it more beneficial for them, right? And set that expectation up in a positive light. So there's a lot of psychology happening in one line here that we changed. And [00:13:00] so you can easily do something similar, I would look at all of the expectations throughout your entire site.

We mentioned the cost of no products. The reality is most of the people who are coming to know, understand that the cost is a little more. So it's not so much about priming the price. Although when you say something is handmade for you or made for you, you expect to pay a little more. You feel like there's more value there.

Okay. So it has that helpful effect there as well, too.

Ryan Garrow: Oh, 100%. And I think that if I could force a change to every Shopify site, it would be to leverage that, the bar above the header that you can put a message in, that almost everybody on Shopify uses it for their shipping callout. Yeah. If that was just standard, like even if you said, we charge you shipping on everything.

I'm like, okay, great. I'm here because I want to buy this. But now I know that when I get to the cart, there's going to be a four 99 charge or whatever. Yeah. Rather than trying to figure out on the site, what am I paying for shipping? Cause I usually don't even want to put it in the cart until I know I'm like, Oh, free shipping at 99.

Okay, great. This is a 79 product. There's going to be something, but. I'll probably add something to [00:14:00] get me to 99 because the shipping cost annoys me.

Jon MacDonald: Yeah. That right there is a great example of priming. You're priming people to spend more, increase our average order value, which is a big tactic that we use shipping costs for quite honestly, right?

Free shipping above a certain amount. Look at your current average order value. There's two ways to do this. The first is look at your current average order value, and then set the shipping rate to be slightly above that. Okay. That will help increase it. I promise you. The second is to look at what your most popular product is and set free shipping just above that.

And that will mean people buy the most popular product, but they're also going to add something else to their cart. Another way, do a bundle. Right there. We've talked a lot about increasing average order value. Bundling is a huge way to do this, just tax something else on, and then it adds up that price you can offer it to them.

And then even as part of that bundle, you can advertise it as free shipping.

Ryan Garrow: And even when this comes out, we're in the midst of holiday season, but one of [00:15:00] my, favorites, but also frustrating, but it works well for me is you discount a product to just below the free shipping threshold. Like your free shipping is a 49 and this gets discounted from 60 to 45.

That's I have to have the deal because I'm cheap. I always shop deals in my nature, but then I'm like, Oh, I'm not paying for shipping. So I'm going to spend another 5 at least. And I ended up spending 15 and I spent 60 for two things. So I essentially bundled myself, but really creative discounting like that gets me.

It's a product that everybody wants at a discount, even if it was, you have a lot of games you can play right now with pricing with discount and free shipping thresholds and adjusting those for new file customers. So many cool things you can do there.

Jon MacDonald: We even talked about that method in terms of Amazon.

And their prime day, I think that we did a recap episode on prime day and you brought up, what is it called? The arrow garden? I think it was something of that name where it's like a little mini garden that they had lowered their price and sold way more and then immediately raised it back up and it [00:16:00] was like, they were playing the same sales

Ryan Garrow: velocity.

Yeah, because people saw the rank was like, Oh, this is Amazon's choice in reviews on Amazon. Don't stay on Amazon. Say historical pricing. So it's super easy to do there.

Jon MacDonald: Yeah.

Ryan Garrow: Yeah. Expectations. If you just give me the right expectations, I do most thing. Most of life is setting the right expectations.

Jon MacDonald: That's a great way to put it. If you come into something with the right expectations to been primed on it, it's really hard to be upset. Yeah, it's all about aligning this experience with user expectations. So companies that nail this, though, as we've talked about today they see improved customer satisfaction, higher conversion rates.

It's a win for everybody. And those that aren't doing this, they're just damaging their reputation. Ticketmaster has made billions off of this while also damaging their reputation to the point where Taylor Swift refuses to use them whenever possible. The key is putting yourself in the user's shoes.

And what information do they need? What might surprise them? What's going to confuse them? And then address those proactively. It's all you can [00:17:00] do. And you'll create that digital experience that feels intuitive and trustworthy. And I don't know about you, but that's really all you want, right? You don't want to be left guessing.

So set those clear expectations and watch your conversion soar.

Ryan Garrow: Yeah, it's just that easy. It's actually not complicated. So it's easy. But also you think about you're paying money for traffic at any time. So that company paid for your traffic to get you to the cart and then to have you leave that's just a waste of your spend and then it makes your

Jon MacDonald: agency look bad and we didn't do anything wrong maybe it's a waste of the skill set that you have hired let's put it that way

Ryan Garrow: yes a lot of waste when you need to cancel expectations right well Jon thank you for this i'm excited to hear about the next five in the heuristics lineup As we get through this process, we will

Jon MacDonald: have you memorize them.

There'll be a quiz at the end.

Ryan Garrow: I'll fail it. I stopped taking quizzes so many years ago.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Drive and Convert with Jon MacDonald and Ryan [00:18:00] Garrow. To keep up to date with new episodes, you can subscribe at driveandconvert. com.