Sep 16, 2020
On today’s episode, we speak with Justin Christianson, the
Co-Founder and President of Conversion Fanatics. Conversion
Fanatics helps businesses find additional revenue through
conversion optimization strategies. Tune in to hear us discuss
exactly what conversion optimization is and Justin’s specific
approach to helping companies increase their revenue.
Topics:
- Justin’s work history.
- Explaining “conversion optimization”.
- Justin’s favorite tools.
- Why directing traffic back to your homepage can make a huge
difference.
- At what point the strategy goes beyond the customer’s
website.
- The importance of incremental adjustments.
- Keeping it simple.
- What is helping him through 2020.
Resources: Conversion Fanatics Justin’s Social Media Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com
Transcription: Joe: Hey folks,
Joe Valley here from Quiet Light Brokerage and the Quiet Light
Podcast. As you know, we are online business brokers, a crew that
has been there, done that. We help people sell their SaaS, content,
FBA, e-commerce businesses and everybody's got a crazy amount of
experience. Everybody's built, bought, and sold their own online
business. Brad bootstrapped a company from 10 employees to 129 with
three men ownership. He also acquired 26 companies or content sites
in a six-year period and sold them to a private equity firm. Jason
raised 10 million dollars in venture capital money and built a
company. Amanda launched an affiliate business as a hobby, and it
became the top four in affiliate in four months. Brian founded the
world's first internet-based due diligence firm. There's a whole
other crew; the rest of the team they've all got a ton of
experience like that and now they're all advisors, brokers here in
the Quiet Light team. I'm probably the least impressive of the
crew. However, in the last eight years, I’ve sold close to 100
million in e-commerce transactions, probably at an average of about
1.1, 1.2 million dollars at a time. And we help first, that's the
most important thing. We take that experience that we have and we
help people around us, whether you are buyers that are listening or
sellers. And we bring people on to the podcast like Justin
Christianson so that he can help as well. Justin, from Conversion
Fanatics and I'm stumbling on that a little bit. Justin, welcome to
the Quiet Light Podcast.
Justin: Hey, thanks for
having me.
Joe: One of the things that we don't do
is read scripts as you can tell by stuttering through that but we
also don't give fancy backgrounds on people. We love to hear it
from them; what their story is and what their background is so
could you introduce yourself to the audience here?
Justin: Yeah, absolutely. So I have been in the
digital marketing online world; I think this is year 19 for me. I
started in my early 20s. I kind of moved up the ranks through
affiliate marketing and lead generation and then became partners on
a company and we exploded that company. I was actually the number
one affiliate for it. We exploded it and grew it like…
Joe: Just for the record, three ahead of Amanda.
There's no question. She was four you were number one. Okay, I'm
busting on Amanda right now, even though she doesn't listen to our
own podcast. Continue.
Justin: Yeah, we grew it
like 500% in one year. We grew it almost 150 the next year. I sold
it back to my business partners about; I guess it's been about 10
years, which is my time to leave. I started a private consultancy.
I’m kind of teaching the implementation and optimization side of
things. And then basically out of demand, I partnered up with my
longtime friend Manish, who is my now business partner, and we
founded what became Conversion Fanatics about six and a half years
ago. Since then I've helped several hundred businesses. I think we
calculated somewhere close to an additional hundred million in
additional revenue for them through our conversion optimization
strategies.
Joe: Incredible.
Justin: We just keep working every single day to
be a little bit better and I’m fortunate enough to help some of the
top companies in the world.
Joe: And I know a few
of them. I know a few of the folks that you worked with through
Blue Ribbon Mastermind, our friend Ezra Firestone, and they speak
very highly of you. And you actually helped Mark here at Quiet
Light with his business Catholic Singles. Why don't you tell us
though; I know the definition of it and I'm going to give a short
story here afterwards but what is conversion optimization?
Justin: Conversion optimization is really the
understanding; well, I'm going to back up because conversion
optimization, when you first say that, people often say, well, it's
split testing. Well, split testing is just the vehicle that we use
to prove or disprove whether we're right or not. But conversion
optimization in and of itself is understanding the behaviors of the
visitor; understanding their wants, needs, likes, dislikes, and
where the key friction points are in an online journey and then
doing what we can to answer the question why certain things are
happening in that journey and then we split test to make sure we're
right or not. So really, it just comes down to reading data and
then executing on the ideas of why we think that data is telling us
what it's telling us.
Joe: And it's not just split
testing, written content, or split testing images or videos or
emails. It's a combination of all of the above, I would think.
Justin: Yeah, we focus primarily on-site or on the
ad side, but we're primarily; I would say 95% of our business is
on-site, user experience, user interface kind of optimization. So,
what happens on the website after they come from that ad and what
can we do to make that experience better for those visitors and
help those brands excel which will also lift up many other metrics
in the business as well.
Joe: So it’s really
perfect for the content, e-commerce owner, SaaS owner, and maybe
the FBA owners that are trying to expand beyond Amazon and get some
traction in their Shopify store or whatever store they might be
using.
Justin: Yeah.
Joe: One of
the things I have to say, I didn't understand what split testing
was back in the day. I sold my e-commerce site through Quiet Light
back in 2010. Mark, actually, Jason here was my broker at the time.
I knew everything. I understood exactly what my customer wanted
more than they did and kept doing these campaigns and putting them
out there and putting out there, putting it out there. Finally, my
web developer said, Joe, don't be an ass. Try split testing. I'm
like, but this is right. And he's like, let's test it. Without a
doubt every new campaign that I tested that I knew which one was
going to win, I was dead wrong. And it would result in like 3% to
5% conversion rate differences and at a $200 or $300 transaction,
that's a tremendous difference, isn't it?
Justin:
Yeah, I mean, we'll see; I'm looking at a test right now, it's like
a 15% swing.
Joe: Holy cow.
Justin: I've got one running right now that's
almost a triple-digit swing in terms of percentage gain.
Joe: When you look at a client that let's say
they're selling a physical product, are you looking first at their
website to try to help speed up the website and improve it? What
approach do you take with new clients? And I know they're all
different, but give me an example of one.
Justin:
Well, really, I take the same approach with all of them, because my
philosophy on that is at the end of the day, we're dealing with
people. It doesn't matter what we're selling, they've all got
wants, needs, buying habits, and decisions and pains and pleasure
points and all of those things that go into that. So, I just try to
understand and put myself in the shoes of that visitor. I look at
the data and say okay, I'll look at their analytics and say, well,
they're female aged 35 to 44, primarily they’re shopping on mobile,
they're falling off on this part of the website. And then I just
put myself in the journey like what's stopping; what are the 10
things on this page that could potentially stop a visitor from
going through the next step? What isn't clear? What can I add or
remove to alleviate those friction points? And really what I'm
trying to understand is what on that page holds the most weight in
the eyes of the visitors? Because at the end of the day, you said
you were proven wrong on a bunch of times. You were assuming
something was going to happen. I’ve ran thousands of marketing
split tests. I’ve strived for just pulling myself out of the
equation in terms of my bias; my understanding, and I try to just
really put myself in the head of the visitors. And once I do that,
then it becomes much more apparent of what I need to test and
where. And then as soon as I figure out what holds the most weight,
I can then exploit that throughout the rest of the website. If they
respond to social proof or they respond more to the benefits of the
product or they need more trust aspect in the brand or they need to
read more about the product or whatever, I try to figure that out.
It could be copy-based. It could be image-based. It could be
something as simple as moving a button off on a page. But I
incrementally test those things to figure out what holds the most
weight and once I figure that out then we just move throughout the
site areas on the website and just keep going to try to continually
evolve and scale and grow that business.
Joe:
Going back to the beginning, you said, you see when they drop off
in their journey at a certain point. If they're looking at a
product and reading an article and at some point, they drop off
instead of actually placing an order, what tools or software do you
utilize to see that path that the customer takes or potential
customer takes to then drop off? It seems to me like that would be
hard to access, that information.
Justin: No,
actually is not. It's one simple report in Google Analytics.
Joe: I've been using Google Analytics for; how
long have I been self-employed? More than a decade or more like 15
years, I don't know; something like that. Too long to the point
where I still don't know how to do stuff like that. Is that
training that Google provides you inside of Analytics and workshops
or things of that nature or you've just learned it over the years?
Justin: Well, it's literally a default report that
I go to. It's under Conversions and you have to have e-commerce
enabled. So it's under Conversions and then E-commerce and then
Shopping Behavior. Literally, it's just a bar graph and it shows
you the drop off points in that process and I just know how to read
that and then you can dig in deeper and deeper and deeper from
there. But generally, I'll get the understanding of it. So, I'll
look at the landing page view and it's basically two reports. I’ll
look at the landing page behavioral report, so I'll see which
landing page; their first visit interaction, what that conversion
rate is. The Home Page is almost in the top three, almost always,
even if you're driving traffic to a separate page or a landing page
and the Home Page is generally underutilized by 90% of the
businesses out there.
Joe: What does it mean
underutilized?
Justin: They're not focusing on it.
They don't care about it. They're focused on landing pages and
product pages and checkout flow but yet I've seen campaigns double
their return on ad spend by just turning some traffic to their Home
Page versus a specific product page. But I look at the
top-performing landing pages and then I look at that shopping
behavior report and then I'll see okay, we've got this many people
that are going on the Home Page, this many people have product
views, this many people viewed the cart, this many people went to
check out, this many people completed transactions. And usually,
there's an outlier in that report. So, if it's on the product page
like the product view one, I'll see okay they’re in the product
view and that means they're viewing a product page, but they're not
adding to cart. And then I just go ask a few more questions of
where you're driving the majority of your traffic, are you driving
traffic directly to that product page or are you driving it to your
home page or collections or whatever and then that'll give me a
better understanding what those visitors are telling me.
Joe: Okay, I got it. And at what point do you go
beyond the website itself? Well, actually, let me back up, first
and foremost. I talked to thousands of entrepreneurs over the
years. Everybody listening to this podcast has a website. Please
install Google Analytics because you're not going to be able to do
any of this stuff that Justin's talking about. And just to dispel a
myth that's out there, Justin, is Google stealing information from
the people that are installing software on the website, or are they
really just giving you the tools to help improve your business and
make more money?
Justin: I guess that's up for
debate with who you ask but every single website…
Joe: I don't want to debate that, by the way.
Justin: No, I definitely don't want to go down
that rabbit hole. Every website out there has it, I mean, has some
form of Analytics involved.
Joe: Yeah, I just sold
a number of them where people have said they straight up don't use
Google Analytics and they use some other unknown software or stat
tracking data that doesn't do what Google does. So, please
everybody install that. When it comes to AB split testing. So,
you're figuring these things out. You get to the point where you
decide you want to move a button-up or the order button up on a
page. Do you just go ahead and do that based off of your experience
or do you split test that always?
Justin: Always
split test it. I am literally proven wrong almost daily.
Joe: Okay, it’s not just me then.
Justin: And we launch 50 plus new split tests a
week for our clients.
Joe: 50 split tests a week.
Okay, always split test regardless. Here's a question for you. This
might be tough to answer. When it comes to deciding the winner in a
split test, my developer years ago gave me stats and he said, well,
you've got to get to this number of total views and then
statistically it's got to get here in order to make it a valid
split test when you determine a winner. Is that still the case or
just kind of do you wing it?
Justin: Well, a
little bit of both. I look at several different factors. I'll look
at statistical confidence, which is one. You have to be
statistically valid. You have to have a big enough sample size. You
have to have a big enough separation. But I also look at the trend
in the data. I look at is it flip-flopping back and forth or is it
staying pretty steady as an improvement or a loss? How big of a
loss is it out of the gate? And then I look kind of anything north
of 25 conversions per variation then I'll start looking at the
data. I always run it for at least a calendar week if it's showing
promise or sometimes longer. Sometimes a test will run for a month.
But there are also the times where you can run a test for six
months and run millions of visitors through it and it'll never
reach statistical confidence one way or another so you have to know
when to cut it. Because if it's null or if it's flat or if it's
bouncing back and forth, it's never going to reach confidence
because there's not an algorithm on the planet that can factor that
fluctuation.
Joe: Confidence being the winner, one
that's going to produce the end result that you want.
Justin: Yes.
Joe: What do you do
at that point? Do you just flip a coin and decide whoever; if I’m
the owner of the website and I like the images on one better than
the other and if it's…
Justin: So, if I don't know
if it's a winner not, I'll generally call it a null result and I'll
stick with the original. Unless it's not hurting anything and it's
actually making it a better experience for the visitors. Meaning
it's cleaning up a page or it's adding a function that might be
beneficial that I can use to build upon. Or maybe if it's stripping
down a page, then I can go in and then test adding some different
types of elements back to the page and it just gives me some more
online real estate to work with. So, it's kind of just sort of a
guess at that point but I usually have an end goal in mind and I
never want to push something that I'm not validating that it's an
improvement. And I also don't focus just solely on conversion rate
either. I focus on the bigger picture on engagement revenue per
visitor, average order value, views on check out; all of those
other secondary metrics just to make sure we're not; because you
can improve conversion rate but make a lot less money or really
dramatically decrease your revenue per visitor. So we just take a
very holistic approach to the whole thing and I’m in it to win so
I'm not going to push stuff just for the sake of pushing stuff.
Joe: Yeah, so number one people have to have
Google Analytics installed, figure out how to run the reports, and
then always do split testing regardless. What are some of the; I
mean you've been doing this for a long time, what are some of the
other than I think you said which was people are not paying enough
attention to their homepage? What other low hanging fruit is there
that folks can do when they look at their own website where you see
most common issues, where they can take a look on their own and try
to fix things up?
Justin: Well, there's a bunch of
them, but generally visitors, we kind of live in this speed and
this trap, I call it, of growth hacking and a lot of people just go
in and say, oh, I think this looks better, let's go ahead and do it
or let's change this or I saw so-and-so had it on their website can
we do it on my website? And I've never seen that really go well.
And also, I think that people think bigger is better so they feel
like they need to completely redesign a page or add these big
changes to make a big impact and the opposite is actually true. You
need to incrementally adjust things to better understand those
behaviors. The majority of people that I see are trying to cram too
much stuff into a very small area. They're trying to over app their
way to better conversions. I've seen stores with 70 plus
applications and plugins and all of the stuff installed and they
don't necessarily do the right things; adding more urgency and more
timers and more pop-ups and things to your website isn't going to
help you for a long term sustainable growth. But the glaring one
that I see is people do not lead from a place of benefit to the
visitors. They're screaming how awesome they are as a company
instead of listening to the visitors and what their product is
actually going to do for them. And I've said this in my entire
career, it's kind of copywriting 101, it’s you lead with benefits.
So, benefit bullet statements. I go back to that all the time and
then I use the features of the product to support those benefits.
I've said this many, many times is I've got 16 gigabytes of RAM in
my computer, which is great. It's a feature, but it's not a
benefit. What does that do for me by having 16 gigabytes of RAM; a
faster processing speed, faster video rendering, all of those
things because nobody wants the feature. They just want what it's
going to actually do for them. And a lot of companies just simply
don't do it. They don't pay attention to it and I see it every
single week on many, many occasions.
Joe: I used
to write ad copy for radio direct response stuff and it was 60
seconds and 18 of those 60 seconds were the call to action, which
was the phone number; the 800 number at four or five times. We used
to be able to get the features and benefits in 42 seconds; simple,
clean, quick, clear. It's funny now we've got so much information
and so many endless pages of websites that we feel like we do need
to just jam more in and do more. Mike Jackness has been a regular
guest on the show. He runs Ecom Crew and Ecom Crew Premium and he
had a brand called Color It that we sold for him. And one of the
things that Mike did very, very well is exactly what you're talking
about when he reached out to customers regarding Color It. He had
one of the biggest Klaviyo campaigns. He talked about it a lot on
the show and that was giving them some benefit with every email
that went out; helping them, teaching them, giving them some
benefit, not hitting them up with a sales promotion every time.
It's a help first mentality and that generally comes back to you. I
think that's great. It’s sometimes simple to do on a website, and I
would think that sometimes it's a little more complex. Are you
finding getting a little more complex with video for instance? We
had Judson Morgan from Butter.la on talking about the increase in
conversions from a static image to a video. Are you finding similar
findings or do you split test those types of things as well?
Justin: Yeah, we always split test it. I've seen
the video go 50% improvement to a 50% decrease and everywhere in
between. It just depends on the brand. I've got an auto detailing
client that has all the gear for auto detailing and they’re very
video-focused so moving a video into the main spot on a product
page in the carousel would prove really effective for them whereas
other companies showcasing a shirt, for example, isn't necessarily
as effective as a product that needs to be demonstrated so it's
really a case by case basis. And if there's a video available,
we'll try to leverage it as much as possible but I have literally
seen swings go both ways.
Joe: Have you been in a
situation where you have been testing video and you're testing that
less is more where it's maybe user-generated content versus
high-end production and one outperforms the other consistently;
probably not consistently, yeah?
Justin: Not
consistently. But I would say I do this with imagery too, is I kind
of lean towards more of the user-generated real type side of
things; the shaky camera, the ums and ahs because I think more
people are relatable to that or they can relate to that a little
bit easier. I've got a client right now that's got a product and
all of their imagery looks like straight out of an Instagram
model's website. Even their user-generated content is Instagram
filtered and perfect and looks like they used a super high-end
camera and I'm like, do you have anything real? Like some real,
hey, this is awesome look at this. He's like, yeah, I've got all
sorts of that. I'm like, well, let's test that because your
visitors are literally saying we don't know if these are actually
as good; the pictures are great, but we don't know if they're
actually as good so we've got to build that trust that the product
is great. And this is a site that sells 2,000 plus orders a day so
they're doing volume, but their visitors are still screaming we
don't know if we can trust this even though they've got 500,000
plus customers. So we're just trying to leverage that as much as we
possibly can to showcase in different ways like, hey, this is real
and it's not…
Joe: Have you had the chance to
split test that yet?
Justin: We're in the process
of gathering all the images. I'm literally going through this this
week.
Joe: And is that your role within the
company or do you have other folks that help you?
Justin: Well, I've got a team.
Joe: Well getting down to the point where you're
picking out those images, or do you let the company owner or your
client pick out the images that you'd be choosing?
Justin: A little of both, we're very
collaborative. But I've got a big team of smart people; designers
and developers and strategists and analysts and all of that stuff.
But I'm very much involved and my business partner and I are in the
overarching strategy. Some clients I'm more in the weeds with than
others. This one I just happened to be going back and forth with
because he was trying to push for one thing and I'm like, well,
your visitors aren't saying they want that so I kind of had to
interject and say, here's what we're seeing from that standpoint.
Joe: And they're literally saying and you’re; and
I'm saying you and I know it’s your team, but I'm saying it's so
that the audience can go and do this themselves as well. You are
literally going on to the reviews, to the Instagram comments and
things of that nature, and seeing what the visitors are actually
saying, or are these e-mails into the company that tips you?
Justin: No, survey. This one is actually like just
a type form survey saying here's the; we took the top three
questions, like what questions do you have that we didn't answer? I
do this with exit polling a lot too so almost all of our clients
we’ve set up an exit poll. So catch the people that are leaving and
just ask them what problem did we solve for you today or what
question weren't we able to answer and give them that open-ended
kind of outlet to tell us where we're falling short. And you'll see
a trend very quickly of what that data is telling you. In this
case…
Joe: So somebody when somebody leaves the
site without placing an order, if that's the objective, you've got
the ability to have them fill out an exit poll form?
Justin: Essentially, yes, just a one question kind
of survey.
Joe: Okay, that's fascinating. Imagine
that, asking them why they didn't order and having them tell you
and having you be able to fix that problem. What you're doing is
not actually that complicated it's just hard work.
Justin: Right.
Joe: I guess you
got to take the time in the detail to get to it, and it's funny, I
find a lot of things in this e-commerce or online world that we
live in not very complicated. It's common sense. Sometimes we just
have to be told what we already know.
Justin:
Yeah, common sense is kind of lacking in a lot of cases these days
it seems like. I mean, even in my career of almost 20 years,
nothing's changed. Just the mediums have changed. So that's really
it.
Joe: True.
Justin: People
come to me and they're like, oh, hey, what's your framework and
what fancy tools are you using and I'm like, I'm simple. I want to
go down to the bare bones minimum possible to get the job done. I
don't want to over-automate and over-analyze. I just want the
visitors to tell me what it is and optimization in that. I mean,
there's a science to it, obviously, but an understanding and an
experience definitely helps but it isn't rocket science. I mean
it's ask the right questions and my question just happens to be
why. Why are they clicking on the button or why are they leaving
that page or why are they watching the video or aren't they
watching the video, why are they dropping off at that point in the
video? It's just questioning everything and then looking for all
the ways we can possibly test to improve that.
Joe: It's a lot of whys in there and none of that
becauses come from the founder of the company or the CMO or
something like that. They come from the customer, which is smart.
It's the mistake I made years ago when I thought I knew everything.
I was dead wrong. It sounds like you are too most of the time when
you're doing your split testing all week. So, listen to the
customer, obviously, but you've got to get that information to the
customer and ask them.
Justin: Yeah, and I think
as business owners, and it's why I hire coaches. It's why I hire
people to get an outside, unbiased perspective because I see so
many business owners often look at their business or even marketing
executives for large, large corporations, they're in there every
single day looking at the data, looking at the website, looking at
the marketing message that they just get numb to it and blind to
it. And sometimes the smallest little change and the smallest
interaction or they're overlooking just some small lever they need
to pull that's going to dramatically improve their marketing
performance. And I fortunately and unfortunately see it all the
time.
Joe: I'm going to go on a short tangent
here. You said you hire coaches. You've been self-employed for two
decades in the online space. What kind of coach would somebody with
your experience be utilized? What kind of coaches do you hire for
yourself?
Justin: So I started out; I'm a direct
response marketer. I'm a B2C guy that for some reason started an
agency. I have no idea how to run an agency. I never did when we
started it so I've hired several; I’ve hired sales coaches, I've
hired other business development coaches, I've hired lead
generation coaches, I'm in a Mastermind right now for agency
owners; all very top level just because there's a lot of stuff that
I don't know from the inner workings of the process. I'm a forever
student and I think I can learn how to do something and I live kind
of by the motto that every day I need to be a little bit better
than I was yesterday even if it's just one small incremental
improvement. I’m a split test guy so I have to strive for that
improvement all the time. And sometimes I have the wrong questions
or I have the questions or I'm not asking the right questions on my
own business and it's even helped me even through all of the stuff
that's going on this year. There was a time where we had a lot of
unknowns, even back in March and if we don't change this stuff
we're going to be in freak out mode if we don't fix some stuff. So,
I needed to lean on my coach and my crew and my circle of influence
on the agency side to kind of help us navigate.
Joe: Yeah, I think that's fantastic. And I ask the
question because you obviously have done some things right over the
last couple of decades and some of the audience members might just
be leaving the corporate world and coming into this online world
that we live in and one on one coaching is the equivalent of one on
one therapy for people that need help but it's for you and your
business. In many ways, it improves you as an individual as well as
a business person and as an individual. We have David Wood on the
podcast; he's a business coach, just talking about the benefits of
asking certain types of questions and trying to make incremental
growth as you've talked about here. And then the Mastermind groups
like Blue Ribbon Mastermind, like Ecom Crew premium, like
eCommerceFuel, like Rhodium Weekend, those are all group therapy,
but it's group enhancement. Everybody shares their secrets with the
other members of the team so everybody can grow and learn together.
So I think it's brilliant, very, very smart things to do.
Justin: There is a lot of; if you get in a room
with people that are on that level or even above you and I don't
always join into our monthly or biweekly phone calls on our
Mastermind and all of the stuff and I don't always need help. I
don't always have something to share but when I do, they're there.
And I think there's a lot to be said about that, too. It's just
having kind of that fallback and kind of a sounding board when you
do have an idea or you're falling short in certain areas.
Joe: I couldn't agree more. Justin, I appreciate
it. Where do people go to learn about your business Conversion
Fanatics; is it just simply
www.ConversionFanatics.com?
Justin: Yeah,
www.ConversionFanatics.com.
You can find all information about us. I've got a best-selling book
that's also available on Amazon. If you go over there, find it. It
has the same name, Conversion Fanatic.
Joe:
Awesome.
Justin: And I'm all over social media so
you can find me at
www.onespotsocial.com/JustinChristianson
and you can find links there; basically everything.
Joe: Fantastic. Justin, I appreciate your time.
Thanks for being on the podcast.
Justin: Thanks
for having me.