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Expert eCommerce Website Optimization Tips With Matthew Stafford of BuildGrowScale.com

Scale your eCommerce business with the best website optimization tips from Matthew Stafford of the behind-the-scenes growth partner to some of the most successful eCommerce brands on the planet- Build Grow Scale™.

Kasim sits down with Matthew Stafford of Build Grow Scale™ as he shares the same eCommerce website optimization practices he applied to help a business earn half a million dollars in just 48 hours!


He also breaks common eCommerce myths that are hurting your sales, shares how to set up your site from the eCommerce business blueprint he has built over the years of helping clients scale, and so much more.


Watch this video to learn more about the following:

- Fixing your homepage first won’t result in the most profit

- Your main menu navigation should be money-making links

- How to increase trust and build a relationship with your customers

- Search is 10% of your traffic and 30% of your sales

- 40% of users don’t scroll so you should apply that knowledge to your site

- Bounce rate matters

- Why online site catalogs don’t convert

- Proceeding to the checkout page right away can lose customers


Connect with Build Grow Scale now! https://buildgrowscale.com/

Build Grow Scale on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BuildGrowScale

Connect with Matthew Stafford: matt@buildgrowscale.com


0:00 Intro | Expert eCommerce Site Optimization Tips

0:43 Matthew Stafford of BuildGrowScale.com

3:17 The importance of being in a community

6:16 Your homepage is not built to sell

12:05 You need a search bar even if you only have four products

15:22 Look at your bounce rate

20:20 Site speed is a huge factor when it comes to conversion rate

28:12 Why your purchase buttons should be unique

34:23 How to work with Build Grow Scale™



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Transcript
John:

One of the, top eCommerce education companies for quite some time.

John:

So we've found the less time that someone's on your homepage,

John:

the higher they convert.

John:

So the quicker that you can get 'em easy navigation to what they're

John:

looking for, the higher it is.

John:

They always start on their homepage cuz that's what makes 'em feel good and

John:

that's what they're always looking at.

John:

But the thing that will make you the most money the fastest.

John:

Is to fix your checkout in your cart.

John:

So you do those first.

John:

Then every change that you make on your site translate into more money.

John:

It's costing with your day, the Google News, and I'm so excited.

John:

Today we're talking to Matthew Stafford owner and CEO of Build Growth Scale,

John:

which has been one of the, top.

John:

eCommerce education companies for quite some time.

John:

Man, I feel like you've been at for at least as long as I've been in the game.

John:

When did y'all start this?

John:

Yeah, it's, probably been around eight or nine years, That's like a

John:

million years in internet Years ago.

John:

Yeah.

John:

Approaching a decade.

John:

Yeah.

John:

And I love it cuz on the top of your website it says over 400

John:

million in e-commerce sales.

John:

And I asked you about that before we started recording and you were like,

John:

Yeah, we stopped counting years ago.

John:

So it's probably like a billion dollars at this point.

John:

I bet.

John:

Yeah.

John:

For me I feel like.

John:

When we say those really big numbers, for the average normal

John:

person who is looking at what we do, it's hard for them to fathom.

John:

And in interviewing a bunch of our customers, I've asked them questions like,

John:

Hey, what did you think of the website?

John:

Cuz obviously we're always optimizing websites.

John:

And a bunch of 'em said, Oh, well we thought you were too.

John:

To help us.

John:

And so I realized, us saying what actual number is now doesn't

John:

actually do us any favors.

John:

it actually pigeonholed us into people that thought that they couldn't

John:

deal with us, that we actually get the most enjoyment out of serving.

John:

that's one of the dangers of branding.

John:

It's such a double edged sword.

John:

Yeah.

John:

Because you can actually brand yourself out of your target demographic.

John:

Yeah.

John:

Yeah.

John:

So I'm gonna try to encapsulate what you do and then maybe you'll fix it for me.

John:

Okay?

John:

Sure.

John:

Sounds good.

John:

you're something of an education and mastermind that teaches people how

John:

to optimize their e-commerce store.

John:

Yeah.

John:

At every stage of the process.

John:

How did I do there?

John:

Yeah, perfect.

John:

So um, we have a, it's called E-commerce.

John:

Business Blueprint, which is a program that teaches them how to set their store

John:

up with all the best practices, all the stuff that we've figured out over the

John:

years, and then how to run traffic, try to get 'em up to about five grand a month.

John:

Then the grow portion of it is our guided mentoring, which is the mastermind

John:

part that you were talking about.

John:

It's got a couple hundred store owners in there.

John:

We all share.

John:

I always say that what we teach now, we've been teaching it so long, it's

John:

kind of a commodity, but what you can't commoditize is the community.

John:

And so in this type of business you spend a lot of time behind

John:

your computer and away from people.

John:

so that community becomes really valuable and there's no way

John:

that you can know everything.

John:

ECommerce is just so big, and so to have that community that you can be

John:

like, Hey, I'm running into this.

John:

And all of a sudden seven or eight or 10 store owners.

John:

Jump in and, oh, we use this app, or Oh, you know, here's somebody

John:

that can help you out or whatever.

John:

Like, we refer you guys all the time cuz we were like, Oh, who does Google ads?

John:

Da da da.

John:

and we'll tell 'em you.

John:

And like that community actually is super valuable.

John:

And then the scale part is where we partner with the stores.

John:

We do all their data and analytics and split testing and developer work.

John:

And then that's where we're getting all of this data that we.

John:

Then can teach the smaller store owners, you know, what's working right now.

John:

So it's not like theory or things that we did 10 years ago.

John:

It's like we do it all day every day.

John:

What a huge value proposition that is too, that you'd help partner with.

John:

I think the thing that business owners are missing most is the

John:

ability to interpret their numbers.

John:

And so to just have a partner that can take that at own it would be huge.

John:

Yeah.

John:

And we teach that inside the group too, I love that you said you can't

John:

commoditize community, That's an absolutely brilliant statement.

John:

I feel like for me.

John:

If you're watching this there's nothing more powerful you can do

John:

for yourself than build a community.

John:

Right.

John:

And you can do it in any niche, any industry, any business, any vertical.

John:

it's this, well that you get to revisit all the time for every, like we get leads

John:

from our community of course, but I also get like, Employees from our community.

John:

the majority of our hiring now comes from our YouTube channel.

John:

It's same, yeah.

John:

Strategic partners and referrals and people like I'm supposed to be

John:

the thought leader in Google Ads and I'm getting hit up all the time on

John:

LinkedIn and Twitter saying like, Hey dude, have you seen this yet?

John:

And I'm like, I haven't.

John:

Thank you so much.

John:

like they feed me now.

John:

It's crazy.

John:

Yeah, cuz we get busy running the business.

John:

Right.

John:

And so what we've always said is we're not a guru business.

John:

Like we only focus on one thing when someone lands on your website to get

John:

them to have a good customer journey and spend money with you, and that's it.

John:

our best referral sources are like venture capital firms and adds companies because

John:

we help the site convert better, make more sales, they can scale media, et cetera.

John:

We don't compete with them, so we actually have.

John:

People like you and, sawtooth and whatever um, teach inside of our

John:

community because we can't know at all.

John:

And if we tried to project that we did we would just give 'em mediocre advice.

John:

And so we actually have a developer that teaches Tech Tuesday.

John:

We have a Facebook company that teaches Facebook Fridays and cetera.

John:

It's a great community.

John:

That's really awesome.

John:

So if you don't mind, I'm gonna ask you to give away as much of the

John:

farm as you're comfortable with.

John:

Half of my listeners are agencies.

John:

The other half are business owners.

John:

Yeah.

John:

and what I'd like to focus on are, I'm stealing this

John:

from Ralph Burns, by the way.

John:

He always says the little hinge swings the big door.

John:

Yeah.

John:

And I love.

John:

That specific contextualization.

John:

Cause there's a lot of improvement opportunities.

John:

There's a lot of little like 1% here or 1% there, but then there's a couple of

John:

things, that just make a huge difference, just give you a lot of leverage.

John:

So you're dealing with e-commerce stores, especially smaller ones, what are the

John:

little hinges that swing the big door?

John:

I try to teach in principles and so I always say clarity trump's persuasion.

John:

most people, when they do their own customer service, they end up

John:

thinking, because this guy wrote in, now the website's not clear.

John:

And they go fix it.

John:

And then the next one, and they go fix it.

John:

And they go add, and they keep adding and adding to their site.

John:

And what happens over time is you're forcing every customer to

John:

go through every one of those.

John:

Things that you're adding to your site and what it does, it just

John:

becomes like cognitive load where it's just so busy or it has so much

John:

on it it's not simple to navigate.

John:

we really teach that each page has a purpose.

John:

So your homepage is not built to sell.

John:

That would be like going into the bar, walking up to the girl and kissing her

John:

and ask her, she'll go home with you.

John:

that's not what it's for.

John:

It's to build.

John:

One, did I land on the right site?

John:

Do they sell what I want?

John:

And then easy navigation to what I'm looking for.

John:

So we've found the less time that someone's on your homepage,

John:

the higher they convert.

John:

So the quicker that you can get 'em easy navigation to what they're

John:

looking for, the the higher it.

John:

The second page would be like a category page, and the only purpose of

John:

your category page is to be a filter.

John:

It's literally to take care, 700 new arrivals.

John:

That if you think about it, if someone's shopping on their phone, which is what

John:

80% of the people are doing how long is it gonna take them at two images wide

John:

to go through your 700 new arrivals?

John:

Then you wonder why only the top 10 things are converting, Nothing else

John:

is working cuz they never even see it.

John:

So you need to give them Good, good filters.

John:

Another really, really good point is that you should have like a search

John:

bar like what Amazon and YouTube and Google have across the top.

John:

Your search traffic will literally be less than 10% of your traffic.

John:

It can be as much as 30% of your revenue.

John:

It'll convert two to three times higher and be worth three to four

John:

times more than the average visitor.

John:

So the more people that you can get to use search better.

John:

The reason, if you think about like what does that tell us?

John:

It means when they can find what they're looking for, they

John:

convert at a much higher rate.

John:

typically those sites means they have some work to do with their navigation.

John:

That was a fire hose of value.

John:

There's so many things I wanna revisit there.

John:

First of all, I love clarity trump's persuasion.

John:

because that's true in ad copy too.

John:

Yeah.

John:

I see people all the time, clients come to us and one of the questions

John:

we get in the sales process is, do you write the ad copy?

John:

And that's when I know I'm gonna have a hard time and I always say

John:

yes, but you're not gonna be, I.

John:

I can just go steal ad copy that's already working using tools that,

John:

I spin honest, buy food, et cetera.

John:

And then they're not impressed and then they provide their own

John:

ad copy and it's always great.

John:

Right.

John:

It's always like super persuasive and, sometimes creative and funny and whatever.

John:

And then my ad copy beats their ad copy.

John:

And it's because all we do is just go straight down middle of the lane

John:

and explain exactly what it is.

John:

Clarity trump's persuasion.

John:

I think that's huge.

John:

Yeah.

John:

Yeah.

John:

We say Homer Simpson.

John:

It, So if Homer Simpson wouldn't understand it, your customer won't either.

John:

because if you do customer service on your store for a while, you'll

John:

realize like people just don.

John:

Understand.

John:

And so it's really funny, the majority, I would say 99% of the times when we

John:

go into a site, our biggest wins for the first 90 days is literally removing

John:

everything that doesn't get used.

John:

40% of your visitors will never scroll.

John:

people worrying about all this stuff, like wait on their page or whatever.

John:

Like that's the small number of people that ever get there.

John:

And if you look, most of them have this hero image that

John:

takes up the entire screen.

John:

People think that's the end of their site, and then they're their

John:

main menu navigation, which is.

John:

The home button shop all about us.

John:

Accessories, all stuff that doesn't actually tell them what they're gonna get

John:

when they Yeah, it doesn't mean anything.

John:

Right.

John:

And so we always tell people they're not gonna click on something that

John:

they don't know where it takes 'em.

John:

So you want things to be very descriptive, like, Accessories

John:

doesn't say what I'm gonna go see.

John:

So depending on what you sell, your main menu navigation should

John:

just be money making links.

John:

Very simple.

John:

You know that that's what people buy.

John:

This is the 80 20 of your site and this is what you want them to go look at.

John:

new arrival value bomb too that's a total paradigm shift for me cuz I've

John:

always looked at the navigation it's like the table of contents in a book.

John:

So your main menu navigation should be your money making links.

John:

Your search bar could be for them to find anything, and there's several different

John:

apps that work really good, that now have predictive search and you can put

John:

in miss spells and all the other stuff.

John:

The other thing.

John:

We used to teach.

John:

if you have less than four products, you don't need search.

John:

What we found is that's really dumb and really wrong.

John:

You still need it, because what happens is people don't just type

John:

what product they're looking in.

John:

They'll actually search their problem.

John:

And so if they put their problem in there, you know, if you don't have

John:

that product, You can go, Oh, they're searching for something we don't have.

John:

And an example, it was a site that we did, They had a, hoodie that would fold

John:

into itself and become a stuffed animal.

John:

Awesome.

John:

It was called Cub Coats.

John:

And they had the number one most searched item on their store was unicorns.

John:

They didn't have a unicorn cub coat.

John:

And so when we.

John:

Show done their search results.

John:

They created one, on Amazon Day, they introduced it and they did over half a

John:

million dollars in sales in 48 hours, . Cause they literally emailed every one

John:

of their subscribers who had ever bought, and they came back and bought the unicorn.

John:

That's what they had been searching for.

John:

So it was literally the search item that we found or we would've never discovered.

John:

Half a million dollars in unicorn sales.

John:

That's so funny.

John:

More value bonds from you.

John:

I like that you said 40% of your visitors will never scroll.

John:

Yeah, that's huge.

John:

That gives a ton of preferential treatment to above the fold.

John:

But like you said, we don't really want them on.

John:

Whatever page they've landed on long term anyway.

John:

Right.

John:

Especially if it's the homepage, You wanna get 'em to what they're

John:

looking for as soon as possible.

John:

So get 'em to a product page.

John:

But most people just run an ad cuz their navigation, their

John:

homepage works so poorly.

John:

They run 'em to an ad where you're making an assumption that they're

John:

gonna like that product or not.

John:

And then they're gonna leave or they're going to go back and try to find.

John:

Easier you make that process, the higher that traffic starts converting.

John:

we all know Dan Kennedy said, whoever can spend the most

John:

to acquire the customer wins.

John:

And so if you convert to think about it, an average eCommerce site converts

John:

around 2%, two and a half percent.

John:

So that means out of a hundred visitors that you sent 97 of 'em

John:

left without buying and 97 plus, and they all think like, Okay, I'm

John:

gonna go buy another a hundred.

John:

Visit and make two and a half more sales.

John:

The problem with that is you had 97 and a half people that raised their hand that

John:

said, Yes, I'm interested in what the ad said came to your site and it wasn't

John:

persuasive enough to make the sale.

John:

Let's figure out what your site is missing or.

John:

Convoluting and get two more of those 97 to say yes and double your business.

John:

Then when you buy ads, you get four out of a hundred and you can start dominating

John:

your market space with your customers.

John:

Well, and using the example you just provided, that's

John:

effectively doubling your budget.

John:

Yeah, it's the same impact to doubling your budget.

John:

So if you're spending whatever it is, five grand, that's equivalent to spending

John:

10 grand, and I imagine that generally speaking, the lifts are a lot lighter.

John:

That expenditure.

John:

Yeah.

John:

You'd be shocked how fast we can get that.

John:

Yeah.

John:

other thing is people don't look at, like, we're always on the site, so we

John:

look at like bounce rate or you can cut your traffic and costs in half

John:

by lowering your bounce rate by 10%.

John:

If.

John:

We say over 75% are red flag, but you'd be shocked how many sites we

John:

see that are 80, 90% bounce rate.

John:

No, I see those too.

John:

And they leave.

John:

And so if you think that you're spending $2 and 50 cents to get a

John:

visitor, but your bounce rate's 90%, you're really spending 10 times that.

John:

And so you cut that down to.

John:

80%.

John:

Now all of a sudden you double the amount of traffic seeing

John:

it for the same ad spend.

John:

You can start claw back some of that, loss or hopefully

John:

get back closer to break even.

John:

we try to teach our store owners break even on the front end,

John:

be really good on the back end.

John:

That's where all your profit is.

John:

acquire the customer as fast as you can.

John:

And then make your money in the third u to 40% that comes from the back end.

John:

And I'm glad to hear you say that.

John:

try to do that too.

John:

But it's a difficult narrative for people to accept coming from us

John:

because we're the paid ad agency.

John:

we're basically saying, Give me more money and hold me less accountable,

John:

But it's nice that I've got an expert where I can be like, you see if

John:

Matt's saying it and he's the dude, because you're absolutely right.

John:

Like, I need to be able to bid.

John:

And it's, gotten more true.

John:

The more aggressive eCommerce has gotten 3, 4, 5 years ago, you could really mint

John:

money on the front end, but now every industry's been so heavily commoditized.

John:

Everybody's gotten so efficient.

John:

I can't tell you all the big businesses that we work with

John:

have one x role as requirements.

John:

Yeah.

John:

Just break me even.

John:

the thing that people don't realize is if you're thinking you can only spend $30

John:

to acquire a customer, you only get the $30 an under pool of clients or, buyers.

John:

The moment that you can spend $40, all of a sudden you, put yourself into a whole

John:

nother tier, right, of higher buyers and you'd be shocked the difference between a

John:

$20 shirt buyer and a $39 shirt buyer, and how many times they'll come back to your

John:

site and buy again and again and again.

John:

This is not a glitch.

John:

I'm interrupting the video you're watching because I need to remind

John:

you that I'm always looking for people to join our team.

John:

So if you're passionate about Google Ads and you wanna work with the best

John:

Google Ads agency on the planet, please go to so late.com/apply.

John:

Speaking of working with the best Google Ads agency on the planet, if you're having

John:

trouble with Google Ads and you want professional help, that's what we do.

John:

You can go to so lake.com, that's s o l eight.com to apply for your

John:

free, no obligation action plan.

John:

And if I've.

John:

Any level of value at all.

John:

Maybe think about giving me a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel.

John:

That's how we juice the YouTube algorithm so they actually know

John:

that I know what I'm talking about.

John:

If you have questions, comments, concerns, or confessions, hit me

John:

below in the comments, and now back to your regularly scheduled program.

John:

If they like the product or they resonate with the brand.

John:

when the person spending 39 bucks on a shirt, it might more

John:

likely to buy the matching socks whole different demographic.

John:

Yeah.

John:

It's a totally different set of buyers and it will revolutionize

John:

your business the moment that you can get the higher tier that you can get

John:

into and break even on the front end.

John:

The much.

John:

Faster that we see those businesses become highly profitable on the back end.

John:

I love that you mentioned improving bounce rate.

John:

What are some specific ways people can do that?

John:

Like what are some of the levers that you feel like you can pull to

John:

make sure that bounce isn't bad?

John:

The amount of apps that they use and delete and do that.

John:

Because a lot of times those apps inject code and then they go, Oh,

John:

we're not using it, and they delete it.

John:

Well, that code is still in their site because it injected that code in.

John:

And basically what causes poor site speed is.

John:

someone clicks something or your site loads, and when it's loading,

John:

it's calling back to a server.

John:

Well, then the server has to check with the app company, with, Shopify, et cetera.

John:

And if that app is missing, then it's in there making that call over and

John:

over and over until it times out, and then it moves to the next thing.

John:

And so what happens is when you have a whole bunch of that.

John:

That slows your speed down a lot, or huge images.

John:

Shopify's done a really good job in the last year to compress

John:

images and, fix a lot of that.

John:

But if you put in these huge images, it ends up not displaying, right.

John:

Doing a bunch of other funky things.

John:

So it's really um, apps, site speed a bunch of dev work that

John:

they haven't went in and kind of unified the code every so often.

John:

If you're changing a lot of stuff on your site, at least.

John:

Every 90 days you should go in and kind of just do like a, refresh and clean

John:

stuff up and make your site speed load.

John:

We talk about it a lot.

John:

Site speed is a huge factor in conversion rate.

John:

So I think the monthly marketing thing that we put out coming out

John:

this month is all about site speed.

John:

So one second.

John:

We will reduce like 16% of your buyers two seconds.

John:

It's like 46%.

John:

Three seconds.

John:

It's over 60%.

John:

So people really want the site to load fast, and if it doesn't, they bounce

John:

three seconds, reduces 60% of your buyers.

John:

Yeah.

John:

Wow.

John:

the big door right there, up site speed.

John:

Yeah, I knew site speed was important.

John:

I didn't realize it was that bad.

John:

Three seconds.

John:

Six.

John:

Yeah, Google gives a lot of stats around it.

John:

because they actually.

John:

The faster your site loads, the more organic traffic they'll give you.

John:

Cuz they, expect that to be a good site experience.

John:

So when we go in and do we have it as a service.

John:

When we go in and fix people's site speed we watch their organic traffic go up.

John:

A lot in some cases.

John:

Do you only work with Shopify or are you doing everything big

John:

Commerce, Commerce solution, SamCart?

John:

we'll do like Shopify Woo Commerce, some big commerce.

John:

that's like 90% of Who we deal with.

John:

it'd be great to say we do everything, but we don't.

John:

So no.

John:

Anybody who says they do everything, I'm always like, No, I'm skeptical of you now.

John:

I love what you said about the search bar search is 10% of your

John:

traffic, but 30% of your sales.

John:

Yeah, I love that you have all these data too.

John:

Typically last, like we had a store that about 7% of their search traffic

John:

was bringing in 37% of their volume.

John:

Huge.

John:

The other thing that I would tell every.

John:

If you want, like these little tidbits, they always start on their homepage

John:

cuz that's what makes 'em feel good and that's what they're always looking at.

John:

But the thing that will make you the most money the fastest is to

John:

fix your checkout and your cart.

John:

So you do those first.

John:

Then every change that you make on your site translate to into more money.

John:

If you spend, a week fixing your homepage and doing all that, but your

John:

cart and your checkout's still broken, it feels like you did a bunch of work,

John:

but you're not getting any more money.

John:

It's very demoralizing and you end up not really doing the work that you need to.

John:

Because you get frustrated.

John:

So if you fix the things that are gonna give you money first, then every change

John:

you make, you can see if it's good or bad right away, and it gets you a lot

John:

more excited to work on your store.

John:

And what are some of the things you can do for a checkout in cart?

John:

Make sure that all your buttons are the exact same color from

John:

start to finish of your store.

John:

It's funny how many, even really big brands that are on Shopify Plus

John:

that it's a default checkout or it's a default checkout button that

John:

doesn't match all of their rest of their branding and colors, because

John:

you have to go to a different setting.

John:

To do it.

John:

The other thing is, a lot of times it will it just uploads whatever

John:

logo you have on your site.

John:

Well, that's valuable real estate cuz that's where the

John:

transaction's about to take place.

John:

And so we teach there's a lot of different things that you can do to increase trust.

John:

Like put an email, put a phone number, things like that, have a

John:

question, call us, email us along.

John:

So you create an image that has your logo and then trust.

John:

Right there.

John:

And they go, Oh, wow.

John:

In their head they're like, If I have a problem, I'm gonna be able to get ahold

John:

of 'em instead of just this generic thing.

John:

I love that you just said that.

John:

I feel like so many eCommerce and SAS people, they're the worst at this.

John:

Yeah.

John:

They don't want check out is terrible.

John:

Any human connection whatsoever.

John:

Yeah.

John:

So I love that you're saying like, Hey, give him a way to reach

John:

out to you, because I can't tell you how many clients they have.

John:

It's more than.

John:

They're like, Oh no, we don't want them to be able to call

John:

us, email us, find us on social.

John:

The thing is, they won't people go, Oh, that's fine.

John:

They just want the option.

John:

They literally wanna see that you're available if they can.

John:

And so we encourage people to just get a Google Voice number, put a phone

John:

number that will send it to an email.

John:

Right?

John:

And then your customer service can take care of it.

John:

The other thing and I just talked at Copy Accelerator.

John:

I was really surprised another.

John:

Whole niche that gets blamed for everything not working is the copy.

John:

the people that write the copy, but like if the store owner or the site owner

John:

hasn't like optimized the checkout, it's default to a poor experience, and

John:

that's where they lose a lot of people.

John:

It's not the copy not doing the job, it's the store, or the checkout page.

John:

So in your form field, you have the ability to put text in there.

John:

So typically it's always default email.

John:

First name, last name, phone, optional second address or, business.

John:

All these things that they can go in and adjust.

John:

So like in the email field, we put email for order confirmation.

John:

The moment that you do that, it's reduced our uh, errors

John:

in the email field up to 70%.

John:

Wow.

John:

So like, if you think about it, People will allow you.

John:

And I thought of it way back when I was reading.

John:

I think it was contagious or something else where people will

John:

give you information if they know, if they have a reason why.

John:

So you tell 'em the reason why, like, 80% of people will let someone cut in line.

John:

If they go, Hey, can I cut in line?

John:

I'm running late.

John:

Like it makes no difference what the reason is.

John:

You just give 'em a reason and they'll be like, Yeah, go ahead.

John:

I'm like, Okay.

John:

So if we give 'em a reason why we're asking for their email,

John:

maybe we'll get a better email or maybe we'll get less errors.

John:

And so we put in there.

John:

The number one open email that gets sent out is order confirmation, and that is

John:

the email that we need to send them that.

John:

So we just said email for your order confirmation and it reduced the errors.

John:

Then for phone, SMS is about 30 to 40% of your rev.

John:

SMS and email is about 30 to 40% of your revenue.

John:

In eCommerce, we put.

John:

Phone required for shipping notifications.

John:

So both ones were giving them what the field is, why we need it, and that

John:

is like, made a massive difference.

John:

And we've tested all kinds of language in there.

John:

Like we've put, we will never call you, but when we did, we will never call you.

John:

We literally tanked, Convers.

John:

It was like a four x, like worse.

John:

And we're like, Okay.

John:

So what we did is we introduced a problem that they weren't considering

John:

that, Oh, if I put my phone number in there, they're gonna call me.

John:

And so as soon as we've been back to for shipping notifications, we

John:

went right back to where it was.

John:

So like we know that that farm field text matters a lot.

John:

That's brilliant.

John:

I forget who it was I was talking to.

John:

It was some authority in email marketing and he said that when

John:

you put a notification under an email saying, you know, we hate

John:

spam too, or we'll never spam you.

John:

He's like, It actually hurts.

John:

Conversions.

John:

Yeah.

John:

it's like, why you bringing up spam?

John:

, we get that same with too many trust symbols.

John:

It makes the site feel untrustworthy.

John:

So when people are putting all kinds of those types of things on their site or

John:

like get rid of 'em, like you feel like a drop ship or, He who doth protest most.

John:

Yeah.

John:

Like God, That's really brilliant man.

John:

It's so funny cuz there's all these little micro optimizations you can make,

John:

especially in the realm of eCommerce.

John:

One other one that uh, maybe everybody can, and I'm trying to do simple

John:

ones that anyone can do themselves.

John:

It's called the hierarchy of focus and other principle.

John:

on your page, whatever page they land on, you want them to literally,

John:

Only have the next most important action that they're gonna take.

John:

Stand out.

John:

having your add to cart button or proceed to check out match everything

John:

else on the site is actually bad.

John:

It doesn't matter what color it is.

John:

Like everybody wants to test button colors we've never found

John:

huge lifts and different colors.

John:

What we found a huge lift being in.

John:

When your hierarchy of focus, that button color doesn't match everything

John:

else because in their head, that's the next most important action to make.

John:

Until they see it, it stands out.

John:

that's what they're thinking about.

John:

And then there should always only ever be like a second primary action.

John:

So they have a main thing you want him to do, or they can find more or they

John:

can see more, learn more, whatever.

John:

By just making sure that they have that hierarchy of focus on a page matters.

John:

not have like four black buttons or four green buttons.

John:

Literally the next most important thing.

John:

I love that Don Miller calls that his primary cta and his transitional cta.

John:

Yeah.

John:

So it's like you can always continue telling yourself this story or

John:

anytime you want, you can just buy.

John:

Right.

John:

And I really liked just the way that he simplified that, and I liked that

John:

you brought it into e-commerce too.

John:

I've heard the unique button color referred to as the isolation effect.

John:

They talk about how psychologically you just can't not look at something that's,

John:

He almost wanted to break the brand.

John:

Yeah, we do.

John:

You know, he almost wanted to be like visually unappealing.

John:

It's really funny how many times we almost argue with them and be like,

John:

Yeah, we understand, But no, it's ugly.

John:

That's the point.

John:

Yeah.

John:

We, Yeah.

John:

When you get to that page, you see it I always say, What is the most important

John:

thing that you want them to do here?

John:

And they're like, Bye, make Okay then.

John:

Don't make it hard for them to do.

John:

Like, let's make it super simple, really, really obvious.

John:

What the next thing to do is, like Shopify, I mean, they're by far the

John:

800 pilla in eCommerce, but like developers aren't conversion specialists.

John:

they build themes.

John:

Not to convert.

John:

They build them to be an online store catalog.

John:

While online store catalogs don't convert.

John:

And so when you look at your site as like your homepage is top of funnel

John:

and your checkout is the bottom of a funnel, what do you have to do

John:

to move 'em through that process?

John:

And each page has a purpose and a specific thing.

John:

Then that focus becomes even more important.

John:

when you get to your product page, you wanted to say add to cart, because that's

John:

the next thing you're gonna do, not buy now, cuz they're gonna actually go to

John:

a cart and they're not ready to buy.

John:

They're not even ready to buy.

John:

When they get the checkout, they're ready to enter their information

John:

and then proceed to shipping, and then they're gonna buy.

John:

the words on each button as you go through the process should just ask 'em to go to

John:

the next step, not this huge commitment.

John:

So when you see buy now and all this other stuff on the homepage, you'd be shocked

John:

how much less that gets clicked than learn more or more options or see more.

John:

And then on the product page should be add to cart with the little arrow.

John:

Then on your cart, proceed to check out and then on, proceed to

John:

checkout, continue to shipping.

John:

And so you literally just working through the process very slowly.

John:

And they don't have to think about what's coming, what's happening.

John:

It's just a very smooth process.

John:

That is absolutely brilliant.

John:

what a value bomb that is micro commitments.

John:

Yeah.

John:

Don't ask for the whole kit and caboodle right on the front end.

John:

I'm not ready, but I'm willing to kind of walk through this hypothetical with

John:

you as long as you don't make me feel like I'm lying to you at some point.

John:

Yeah.

John:

and the thing is like they read every button.

John:

They have to read it cuz they need to know where they're going, what they're doing.

John:

And so if you can literally enter the conversation in their mind where

John:

they're at, I'm on the product page, I'm not ready to buy now, even if I.

John:

Think I want this.

John:

We've bought hundreds of thousands of videos now over the years.

John:

People use their cart to shop.

John:

So like they'll go through the store and add seven or eight things to their

John:

cart and then look at their cart and go through it and get rid of the things

John:

they don't want, and then go on to buy.

John:

Like, a lot of people shop like that.

John:

And so if it's like buy now, like in their head they're like, No, I'm not buying now.

John:

I'm like, Shopping shortlist.

John:

Yeah, yeah.

John:

Or I'm adding to my cart is actually what I'm doing.

John:

So just say add to cart.

John:

That is genius.

John:

So one of the things that I've noticed, and I swear this probably happens,

John:

80% of the eCommerce sites that I evaluate, and even this is true with

John:

sites that have robust skew count.

John:

You scroll through the site, look at the store, look at the catalog.

John:

You find a product you like, and you click on whatever the conversion button says,

John:

and I won't speak to the nomenclature, and then it takes you to check.

John:

Yeah.

John:

And I'm like, Why?

John:

the analogy I've always used is imagine going through Target and you've got

John:

your shopping cart and you're rolling around and you have a whole laundry

John:

list in your mind, and you take the very first thing, throw it in your

John:

cart, and then somebody from Target like comes sprinting down the aisle.

John:

Yeah.

John:

And then they drag you to the checkout.

John:

Yeah.

John:

And I'm just like, Why would you force, keep 'em going.

John:

they're buyers now.

John:

Let 'em continue to.

John:

Yeah, so we always say that we treat everybody as a browser

John:

until they add to their cart.

John:

Then we consider them a buyer.

John:

Once they do that, then the next step is to get 'em to buy from

John:

you and then work on getting them to come back over and over.

John:

Yeah, same thing.

John:

So like they're a shopper.

John:

Once they put something in the cart and, and then at that point you

John:

get to talk to them differently, treat 'em different, so on.

John:

That's really cool.

John:

Matthew, if people wanna work with Build, grow Scale, what's

John:

the ascension path look like?

John:

Like where's the easy place to start?

John:

What's their literally you could go to our website and there's a Optin farmer.

John:

We give you some free resources.

John:

There's also links to our Facebook page, our YouTube channel.

John:

Cetera.

John:

And there's tons of free stuff on there.

John:

Like you and I are talking about before the thing.

John:

We would love to provide a bunch of value for you, and then, when it makes

John:

sense then choose to do business with us.

John:

That's what we would look for or we'd enjoy that.

John:

Well, in your YouTube channels really robust, like I'm looking at,

John:

I mean, you got 11,000 subscribers, almost looks like hundreds of videos.

John:

most people have like 2, 3, 4 minute videos.

John:

You've got like an.

John:

these are our podcast.

John:

So all different subjects, topics that you know, that they get a lot of value from.

John:

This is great.

John:

So I'm gonna include links to your website, your YouTube channel.

John:

Where do people, if somebody wants to connect with you,

John:

where's the best place to go?

John:

On there, Or they could email me at matt@buildgrossscale.com.

John:

Okay.

John:

Last words to you, sir.

John:

Any final nuggets for our audience?

John:

I'm happy to serve.

John:

So like you know, if they have a question or they need help, we'd love to help 'em.

John:

like I said, there's tons of free resources, so.

John:

Yeah.

John:

Well, I wanna parrot what you said.

John:

You can't commoditize community.

John:

Yeah.

John:

And if you don't have a community, this is a good one.

John:

like, find one.

John:

But this is a damn good one.

John:

and the community should be in your niche.

John:

and you know, e-com is a pretty specific niche, so, I mean,

John:

you just overwhelmed us with value here.

John:

I think you've kind of established your.

John:

Yeah, we can't be experts at everything.

John:

And so the community should be a blend of, multiple experts

John:

that create the whole picture.

John:

Otherwise, you gotta be a part of three or four communities.

John:

And when you do that, like we all know that I always ask myself For anything

John:

that I do is a sustainable, like, it's easy when you're excited to get into

John:

that community and learn a bunch of stuff and do that, but what happens

John:

as soon as you start doing that work?

John:

It's hard to be a part of three or four different communities and

John:

actually stay up with what's going on.

John:

So really define a community that doesn't try to be the

John:

guru but has like the experts.

John:

things that you need, to run your business, that's the easiest, most

John:

sustainable process, and that's really how we built our community,

John:

is around being sustainable.

John:

Can they go in one place and literally get 95% of their questions

John:

answered fairly quickly and easily?

John:

I really love that.

John:

Matthew Stafford owner and CEO of build row skill.com.

John:

If you're watching this, check out Matthew.

John:

Send some Love his way.

John:

He's donating his time to us.

John:

We're super grateful.

John:

We shoot a video every day, Light, comment, subscribe.

John:

If you've got questions, hit us in the comments below.

John:

And other than that, we'll see you tomorrow.

About the Podcast

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The Google Ads Podcast
PPC Strategies, Tutorials, Tips, Tricks, Hacks, and Best Practices