Drive and Convert

Announcer:
You are listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast about helping online brands to build a better e-commerce growth engine. With Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow.

Ryan:
All right, so Jon, the title of this podcast you sent over to me, I laughed. Honestly, I did. I saw the title, I was like, what on earth is he talking about?

Jon:
I'll admit it's a mouthful, we'll start there.

Ryan:
Well, it's a mouthful, but it just took me off guard, because us in the e-commerce world are used to our brands telling us, call me in January. Once we hit the middle October, we're not doing anything, I don't care. We're all focused on holiday. And for the most part, I get it. But you're going to talk to us today about why November is a phenomenal time to do a conversion website audit. And that, to me, initially was going to be a tough sell.

Jon:
Okay.

Ryan:
But I've read the notes and I'm like, as we well know, Jon's a smart guy. But I'm guessing very few brands that you talk to, or even have a chance to work with, take advantage of November as a conversion audit time period.

Jon:
Yeah.

Ryan:
For a variety of reasons, I'm guessing. There's so much going on, but.

Jon:
Yeah, for sure. Look, first of all, I'd like to keep you on your toes, so that's why I did this thing.

Ryan:
Yeah, it's like, we're going to talk about conversion audits [inaudible 00:01:23]? Crazy.

Jon:
Yeah. Let's see, what would Ryan know that I would not typically think, and let's just do the opposite. Pull the rug out from under him.

Ryan:
Yeah.

Jon:
All right.

Ryan:
I love it.

Jon:
Well, look, here's the reason. Brands are very often thinking, how can I fit this conversion audit in, when I'm doing my job during holidays, and I'm even in the warehouse packing boxes, just to get orders out the door. We hear that quite often from mid-size e-comm brands. If you're an e-comm manager and you're not packing boxes during holiday, count your blessings that you're of a scale where you haven't had to do that, because it is often all hands on deck, pack boxes, get things off the shelves, and get them sent out. But, really, for me, by the end of this episode, my goal is to show how a Q4 audit can be the hero of your e-commerce team during the holidays in Q4. So, hopefully I can convince you.

Ryan:
Okay, I love it.

Jon:
How's that?

Ryan:
I'm guessing you can, since you've done it almost 50 times on just this podcast alone. But if you are an e-comm manager that is not packing boxes this holiday season, you should probably call Jon and I, because we can probably give you some more sales so you're forced to.

Jon:
There you go.

Ryan:
Okay. But let's start, Jon, by talking about that first question. E-commerce brands are juggling a million things in this holiday season in Q4, so how are they going to be able to fit in website audits? Because it has to take some time from their team, I assume.

Jon:
Well, I don't think that it takes as much time as they think. I think that the real reason though is that I often see e-commerce managers just take their foot off of the optimization gas pedal in Q4. And I think that that's a huge issue. They cite that they're entering a code freeze or they're working on more important holiday campaigns, but some even argue it's really just not even worth their time because Black Friday and Cyber Monday visitors are all bargain hunters who won't return. And I think you and I know, yeah, that might be true to some degree, however, you still got to have a list, I'd rather have that first party data, of those people who are buying to market to. Maybe you can convince them to come back.

Ryan:
Mm-hmm.

Jon:
And there's always next holiday, if not. If they really just want that bargain, you can hit them up next year. While all these points have an element of truth, I really believe that shouldn't stop a brand from continuing their e-commerce optimization efforts. I recognize that website managers are juggling a million things, I get it. But optimization can and should still be top of mind for Q4. So, one way to make that happen is, of course, we're talking about it today, to run a conversion or digital journey audit, find all those opportunities, and amplify the impact of your team. Bring in the experts, get extra eyes during the surges of traffic that you're sure to get from all that marketing blitz that you're doing for holiday. So, Ryan, for short, a brand can level up against the competition by continuing these optimization efforts and that work through the end of the year, when other brands, they're at a standstill. So, why not take advantage of improving yourself while others are not?

Ryan:
Well, I think just even that point right there. I always look through the lens of competition and trying to win. And yeah, I think Warren Buffett had some famous sayings about when people are selling, you should be buying and when they're buying, you should be selling. Thinking about it from that lens, other people aren't working on improving things, maybe that's a phenomenal time you should be working on improving things, because you'll be that much further ahead going into Q1. Because they decided to sit on their [inaudible 00:05:01] and just collect sales, whereas you were collecting sales by default, because it's a holiday, but you also took a lot of steps to move forward.
So, I can see that logic, but I'm excited to hear some of the details you have around the why you've seen, and some of the things you've encountered in running these audits and improvement sessions in the Q4. So, what are some of those benefits? If I'm going to run a website audit in November, and use some of these resources because it's scarcer usually for most brands, what am I going to get from that? What do I come to you with, and what's the output I'm going to get?

Jon:
Well, I think there's so many benefits to doing it during this timeframe. And this is why I think it's somewhat of a missed opportunity for brands. And I've got a list here of eight benefits, so we'll go through them.

Ryan:
Dang, I was expecting like three or four. But man, you come to the table with eight.

Jon:
Well, I had to convince you, right? If I was going to pull the rug out from under you, I had to bring the heat.

Ryan:
I probably would've been fine with one. Like, Hey, your competition is not doing this, you should do it. I'm like, heck yeah, let's do it. But, that's me.

Jon:
If only the entire ecosystem was as kind as you were and believed me, I'd be a billionaire. All right, listen, let's start with the first one, I think it's the most obvious. And that's that you have more sessions and data than normal. Pretty clear. During a holiday, especially e-commerce stores experience a surge in traffic and transactions, and with many of them coming from new to file customers. And I think that's important. These are people who you really want to optimize the shopping experience for, because they haven't purchased from you before. They don't know what they're supposed to do. They don't have an expectation. They really need to be shepherded through that process, if you will.
So, with this increased activity, it really provides a wealth of data, user sessions, and it just makes it an ideal time to conduct an audit. And with that larger data set, you can quickly identify everything that would be most helpful, trends, patterns, issues on your website, which is really important during holiday. Gaining valuable insights into what works and what doesn't. So, again, most obvious, right? You have more traffic, you have more data. But it is one of eight, so, it needed to be said.

Ryan:
Got it. So, you can quickly see problems, but I guess in your experience, have you found that that leads to more frustrations? I can imagine if I find out by November 15th, oh my gosh, my landing pitch sucks. Jon just showed me, and now I can't change it.

Jon:
Well, look, do I think you should have conducted an audit in January to prep for next year? Yes.

Ryan:
True, true.

Jon:
As early as you can. Most people get to this point and they just throw up their hands and they say, forget it. They're like, I'll talk to you in January. And then, things happen, things move on, and then they end up calling the good in September/October, saying, oh no, we've ignored this all year, and holiday's coming up, we're planning, let's get the site in tip-top shape. And my first response is, where were you in January? And my second response is, look, we can tell you what's wrong, but this isn't enough time for us to truly AB test, for us to do other type of validation techniques. What we can rely on now is our experience, [inaudible 00:08:23] analysis, we can rely on all that kind of stuff, but when it comes down to it, we'll take a look at all the data, it's going to be really hard at this point to do anything with large data sets and actual visitors.

Ryan:
Got it. So I think that's probably a key point from my understanding, is, this is an audit, we're going to see that, hey, this needs a test. Because we think it could be better, but we won't know until we test. So, we're setting up almost our tests for the Q1, to really [inaudible 00:08:50]-

Jon:
Now, we may find things-

Ryan:
... notice possible friction.

Jon:
Yes. And we may find things in the audit that are quick changes. But I want to be clear, this is not a time that you're going to be fixing everything. What you're going to be doing here is, yeah, you may be frustrated because you're in the middle of a code freeze, you can't fix them. But I'd rather you know than not. Because, reason number two is your site is full of high intent visitors. This is really a time of year where everybody's high intent, there's holiday shoppers, they're seeking products, and deals. By auditing your website in November, you can better understand and assess the behavior of motivated shoppers. The rest of the year, traffic may be mixed. But it really helps you to tailor your site and your user experience to cater to the needs of the people who are ready and want to buy. So that during the year you can get that conversion rate up, you can get the revenue up by making sure your site's optimized.

Ryan:
And you should have, should, have fairly clean data from certain channels, that you can't as a higher volume. You might not have a lot of really high intent people from, pick on Google Ads, for example, in other periods of time during the year. But in November, you're going to have a large swath of, I want to buy, I came to your site with my credit card ready to go, didn't buy. Oh, okay, now we have some things we can test because we saw the data maybe wasn't what we expected.

Jon:
Well, right. And going back to the timing on this, this isn't even one of the eight reasons, but if you wait until January, typically traffic and purchases are way down in January because everyone just spent all their money. So, what you're going to optimize in January is returns. You're going to optimize customer service at that point, maybe exchanges if you're lucky. All in all, you're going to have really high intent people here, if you wait until Q1 to start optimizing. At that point, you're going to be doing a smaller sample size with a less intent audience.

Ryan:
Got it. Better to be doing some AB tests than for other purposes, once you know that you need to test it.

Jon:
Right. Exactly.

Ryan:
Okay.

Jon:
And number three is learning about different types of shoppers. So yes, high intent, but holiday shopping is going to attract a whole wide range of shoppers, because you're looking at people that are first time buyers, gift shoppers, your regular customers coming back, looking for a deal. So, you're getting people to your site who maybe wouldn't be coming the rest of the year, because it's not necessarily of interest to them, but they know it's of interest to other people on their shopping list. So, by conducting website audits, you can gain insight into all of these various customer segments. And typically you might not have a lot of data on them. So, understanding those preferences, behaviors, it really allows you to, I would say, supplement your optimization program, and create a more comprehensive strategy. So, I think that's something that you should be thinking about. All these other, you're getting gift buyers, et cetera.

Ryan:
Yeah. Well, there's a lot of Q1 buying sessions that you want to be prepared for too. If you can't find some potential issues with high intent holiday shoppers in November, you do have Valentine's Day coming up in February, which is a high intent gift buyer. You have Mother's Day coming after that. You have Father's Day after that. And then you go into this dearth of, they might be high intent gift shoppers, but we don't know when that is, we can't run a specific campaign for that.

Jon:
That's great. That's fair. That reminds me one thing that the US economy is really good at, is having a reason to buy every single month.

Ryan:
We are. I've got them all on my calendar. If you need an e-comm calendar, you can Google and find some pretty good one. Lots of reasons to buy.

Jon:
There you go. Number four is a code freeze means fewer variables. So, what does this mean to me? Well, you mentioned a code freeze earlier. Most people say, we can't do this because we have a code freeze, we don't want to make no changes during this time. Yes, but we're not actually going to be making changes. Maybe you can, if you're not in a code freeze, but that should not be a reason to not do an audit. When the IRS, and this is a negative connotation of the word audit, but when they come to audit you, they're suggesting you make changes to your, or asking you, to make changes to your return, but they're not making them for you, in a lot of instances. Sometimes they do, they're like, this is so egregious, and they send you a bill.
But, I think if your e-commerce business is in a code freeze during Q4, you won't be making significant changes to your website's code or structure anyways, so the variables affecting your site performance remain really stable. So, performed in this context, the audits really provide a clear snapshot of just how your site is performing without the influence of continuous testing and changes. So, clean data, and it really takes what most people would say is a negative, that code freeze, turns it into, this is actually probably a positive.

Ryan:
I like it. Yeah. A stable system is much easier to audit than, hey, we just implemented a change last week, maybe it stays, maybe it doesn't. Okay, well, we'd have to run two audits.

Jon:
Yeah. And I think this can be a huge issue during the year, you're changing up your ad campaigns. You're auditing your site for SEO and making changes there. If you're running AB tests, it's really hard to... We can separate out that data, but it's really hard to have a large pool of data, knowing that everything is consistent. So, I think that's a bonus here. Number five is to prove out your investment. So, during peak holiday season, e-commerce businesses often invest heavily in improving their customer experience. They have more customer support on staff, they are really working hard to get things shipped on time, and provide updates because there's always delays with shipping.
What company is it? SHIPPOP always has that tracker. Every day they release, how many days does the average shipment take, across all major carriers? And I think that can be helpful. And audit allows you to validate your investments, and assess the impact of your customer experience initiatives. Which, are something you may wish to continue to invest in throughout the year if it really shows a big lift. So, it's an opportunity to showcase all of these positive changes you've made, and identify the areas that maybe you actually need further attention as well.

Ryan:
That's helpful. Most decisions in e-comm roll up to, what's the return?

Jon:
Oh yeah.

Ryan:
Very few I get to, they're like, yeah, we just need to do it because it's right. I'm like, well, you do it because there's an ROI, it may not be just because it's right.

Jon:
Let's be honest, it's a business.

Ryan:
It is.

Jon:
And it needs to have a return on all the investments.

Ryan:
And most of my clients aren't here to lose money.

Jon:
Yes.

Ryan:
Yeah.

Jon:
Well said.

Announcer:
You're listening to Drive and Convert a podcast focused on e-commerce growth. Your hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate optimization agency that works with e-commerce brands to help convert more of their visitors and the buyers. And Ryan Garrow of Logical Position, the 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:
All right, number six. We'll keep rolling through these. There's eight of them, so we've got some ways to go.

Ryan:
Okay.

Jon:
All right. Number six, extend your ability to monitor your site during busy times. So, with so much going on in Q4, it's really a challenge to keep an eye on your site and performance. And having your site go down for a few hours during peak time can really put a hole in your numbers. So, having an external set of eyes on your site helps extend your ability to monitor the site reliability, and a team of experts coming into audit can help you really identify issues and opportunities that you might miss otherwise. Maybe every product page PDP template looks great, except for one page. It's written on the same template, but there's something going on on that one page that breaks it. You probably aren't checking every single page of your site before a holiday or every day during it. So, having someone come in and do an audit can really help point out, hey, this image is broken, this link is missing, this text is missing, whatever it might be, and really help extend, again, that ability to improve and monitor your site during the busiest time of the year.

Ryan:
I like that. Extra eyes are always valuable, and I wouldn't have even thought of that one, and looking through my site for broken links or images. Because I mistakenly would've assumed my team had that.

Jon:
Well, maybe we should put together a checklist of what to do pre-holiday. This would be high on that list for me. Because most people don't do it. All right, number seven, leverage the time and budget. What do I mean by this? Well, instead of letting your time and budget go unutilized during the end of the year, conducting an audit can really be a productive way to make the most of your remaining resources. How many budgets are use it or lose it? And so-

Ryan:
Too many.

Jon:
Too many. And what I often see is brands just throw more money at different types of marketing.

Ryan:
Marketing.

Jon:
Right.

Ryan:
Marketing.

Jon:
Yep. They're like, oh, I'll go do that influencer campaign I was planning on doing. Or, well, we only had one ROAS on that campaign, but it's more people coming to the site, so I'll just throw more money at it. And so, I think really looking at something to get you a high return here is going to be pretty important. It's a strategic use of your budget. So, really, I think making sure that you're capitalizing these benefits, maximizing your return during the busy holiday season, and positioning yourself for continued success moving forward. It's all going to be important, and making sure you're utilizing your budget at the end of the year.

Ryan:
It is. I would argue that way too many of the brands that we work with that are use it or lose it will just throw dumb money at a gamble, knowing that even if the gamble worked, it's still likely not going to move the needle. But you're just like, well, we had to try it to see. Whereas, a website audit, very clear ROI, and it sets you up really well for the next year. And I would argue, '24 could be a difficult year.

Jon:
Yes.

Ryan:
And if there are less people searching for your products, if your influencers are less effective, you might want to make your site more effective to help counterbalance that. And this would be an easy one... Investing in a website audit, probably, I would guess, this is maybe a point of clarification, probably won't pay off now if you can't make changes to the site. So, you're not going to say, hey, I paid this money now and look at what we got. It's I'm going to pay it now, knowing we have the budget to cover it, it's not going to tank my ROI across my whole site, but it does make Q1 a much better shot at achieving a higher return.

Jon:
For sure. And the reality is, you will get a report, you'll get the audit that tells you where the opportunities are. So that can help you budget for the next year or too. Oh, okay, I see this issue, we need to go out and solve that issue, it's probably going to cost X or Y to do it. And that really takes us to number eight, which is just setting yourself up for a successful year in the upcoming year. Conducting user research in Q4 really just provides that strategic advantage to set you up for a successful year ahead. So, really look to gain those insights and user behaviors, preferences, pain points, all of that that you can do during the holiday season to tailor your strategies for the upcoming year. So, hits the ground running in January, make data-driven decisions based on real user interactions, just makes all the difference.

Ryan:
Yeah. And I would say, probably too many clients, or too many people listening to this, go to their digital agency and look for all this advice on budgeting. And truth be told, budgeting is a crapshoot. But, if you have some indicators that say, hey, if our spend is the same, but we expect to have some incremental improvements on conversion rate because of what we just did, that's very easy to model out, and say, okay, I can conceptually see how we can adjust conversion rate even up, let's say, 10%, on the low end, that does create a higher return, even with the same spend. And that's easy to model and justify because the report you're given in Q4. And then asking to come back and pull numbers out of a marketing agency that is like, there's no way we're right, across the board. And so, we're like, you're going to reforecast anyway, but this would give you a much more...

Jon:
I agree.

Ryan:
... a closer idea of, I think, what you can do with it.

Jon:
And any aid you can have there... Look, I have been in business 15 years, and I don't think my budget has been correct once, probably not even that close.

Ryan:
No, [inaudible 00:22:10].

Jon:
Every year I'm like, come on, CFO, do we really need to set a budget this year? Because we all know it's bullshit. Let's just... Let's have a target revenue number, that type of stuff, I get. But a budget, let's just not spend money if we don't have it. There you go, that's the goal.

Ryan:
There's the goal. Yeah. And that they're still going to draw it out of you, because well, how much are we going to spend on events and sponsorships? [inaudible 00:22:34] I don't know, we're going to look at the event and say if it's a good idea or not. Maybe it is, maybe it's not.

Jon:
Well...

Ryan:
Always invest in my events though, it's always a good idea.

Jon:
There you go.

Ryan:
So, I see why November is often misunderstood, and we'll keep fighting this battle. So anybody listening to this, hopefully they've been convinced as well. But I would probably hesitate to emphasize November as better than other months for a conversion audit. Now, would you agree with that, or is it one of the best months out of the year?

Jon:
Oh, I would totally agree with that. I think that the goal of this is to argue that November is a good month, doesn't mean it's the only good month. I mentioned earlier, when people call me in November, I'm always like, well, first question is, where were you six months ago? Second question is, let's do this, so it can still be done. And I think that's really the misunderstanding I'm here to correct. So, every season, for sure, has its benefits. And I think that's important to understand. I also think, you mentioned, wow, this upcoming year might be a problem. I think that that's true. And I think this year in particular there's an advantage to conducting an audit in Q4. Shopify recently shared an enterprise event in their ecosystem, that they looked at all the data, and what they found was that-

Ryan:
And they have a lot.

Jon:
Yes. That for about half of their sites, one half, traffic volume is down year [inaudible 00:24:06]. But that's still a lot half, right?

Ryan:
Yeah. And is this only their Shopify Plus sense, or is this Shopify as a whole-

Jon:
It's the entire ecosystem. Okay.

Ryan:
Entire ecosystem, almost 2 million sites.

Jon:
Yes.

Ryan:
Massive piece of e-comm. Okay.

Jon:
Okay.

Ryan:
These are big numbers.

Jon:
Conversion rates are down, across the board, year over year. Average order value, down, year over year, across the board. And we've seen at The Good, even, similar trends across our clients and all the contacts we talk to at the DTC space. So, if you're listening to this and nodding your head, and thinking, thank goodness I'm not alone, it's true, you're not alone. But an audit's probably for you this season. I think that's really... If everything's great, you're firing on all cylinders, you're up year over year, I get it why an audit may not be high on your list. But, if you are down this year, and you really want to set yourself up for what's going to be a challenging 2024, there's no two ways about it, I still think that's going to be a challenging. I am eternally optimist, but I do look at this and say, probably still going to have some issues going into this year.
Interest rates aren't going down, inflation is still happening. Yes, it's down from its peak, but it's still happening. Cost of livings is high as it's ever been. I think it's really going to be a challenge for people to do discretionary spending online. So, conducting an audit is really that first step to figuring out why people are experiencing a decline, and understanding how your website can be optimized to combat any further dips that may be coming down the line.

Ryan:
I agree. I actually heard a fun stat today at one of our meetings, that-

Jon:
Why do I think this isn't going to be fun?

Ryan:
It's not a fun number, unfortunately. But it does prove a point that you need to get more aggressive on conversion rates. Q3, we saw across our paid channels, CPC is up 13% across a lot of clients. And that generally speaks to me that the pie of customer acquisition is shrinking, but the competition has not shrunk yet. So, we haven't had enough companies, and I don't wish for this, but we don't have enough companies that have gone out of business yet to pull back their marketing so that the CPCs come back down to normal. So, if your conversion rate-

Jon:
And I think part of that too is that a lot of brands during COVID who never emphasized e-commerce, they have a very stable business, but the e-commerce unit was never part of their emphasis, it now is. And they have not stopped advertising. So, I argue that even if some businesses have or will go out of business, that pool is never shrinking. It's never going to go back to what it was pre-COVID, because there's too many people now in the e-commerce game, who weren't pre-COVID for one reason or another, but they had thriving businesses. Think about all the people who had to go online to get everything. From groceries to ordering anything, really. So, that pool is not going to shrink.

Ryan:
No, and you're going to have these entities that are going to have growth goals. Whether they make sense or not, somebody's going to hand down a thing that says, I need you to be up 10%. Okay, the only way to get that is to take that from somebody else often. And if the pie of buyers is also shrinking, you're now gobbling up a larger market share to keep pace, or keep up with the goals you have. So, you'll have to get more aggressive on your marketing acquisition. And I say this so many times on calls, that it's Google's ecosystem for capturing demand at least. Almost 90% of the searches in the US are done on Google, when they're looking for stuff.
Given that, and the fact that Google has a phenomenal trove of smart people that are very good at helping ads get shown, but they're also very good at just moving that margin from your bank account to theirs, on that first order. You're fighting against some very smart people if you're trying to say, no, we've got to keep lowering acquisition costs, lower acquisition costs, the competition's going to ratchet up that almost every industry will get to a point where it's probably breakeven on that first order, if it's not already there, and some are way beyond that.
But that says, a company that knows how to improve their conversion rate is astronomically ahead of a company that is just going to stand pat and stay. No, the site is what it is, and we're just going to keep trying to advertise and getting better at the advertising. You can't just do better at advertising and overcome a crappy site experience, or poor conversion rate. So, I'm in. Q4 web audit should be the hero of the brand's e-commerce team this holiday season. If you haven't done one because you've been waiting for the perfect time, there is not a perfect time, you just do it now.

Jon:
Awesome.

Ryan:
Because it's okay.

Jon:
Well, mission accomplished. I've convinced you. I surprised you and convinced you, and I gave you eight reasons why. So, thanks for the chat today, Ryan.

Ryan:
[inaudible 00:28:55]. Yeah, making sure the team has a copy of this podcast.

Jon:
There we go. Great resource. Have a great day, Ryan.

Ryan:
Thanks Jon.

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