#45. How To Improve Your Website Conversions With Reese Spykerman | Podcast

Vira  0:00 

Today we have a very special guest, a guest who knows everything about good websites, good copy, good designs, and today, guest is here to speak and share her knowledge. Reese Spykerman.

Alissa  0:35 

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of email Einstein, Vira and Alissa here with a very special superhero guest. But before we get started, we are two email marketers at an email marketing agency called Flowium. We are so passionate about email marketing, and because we love what we do, we want to share all of our insights with you. The company we work for, Flowium is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world. We specialize in providing a premium, full service e commerce, email marketing experience for all of our clients, and our service is tailored specifically for your business and is designed to help increase your online retail revenue by 20 to 50% I know those numbers seem crazy, but I promise they’re legit. We deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment. That’s what we’re all about here at Flowium, and a brief reminder before we get into our intro, if you like what we do, please leave us a review. Vira, why don’t you take us away with introducing our superhero guests for today.

Vira  1:33 

I’m super I’m super glad to do that. So guys, today we have a very special guest, the guest who knows everything about good websites, good copy, good designs, if you wish your emails brought in more consistent sales. If you have any questions about like, how bigger brands get key parts of their websites wrong and loose and leads the sales and today, guest is here to speak and share her knowledge. Reese Spykerman, say hi Reese.

Reese  2:02 

Hey there. Vira, thank you so much for that intro. I am thrilled.

Vira  2:06 

I have I have more. I have more for the interview. We were just talking about your last name because I’ve never heard it before, and it’s literally sounds like a superhero last name. So that’s a very promising beginning. So Reese is an E commerce conversion expert who has spent more than 15 years working closely with entrepreneurs and brands on their online marketing. And today, she helps e commerce brands quadruple their monthly revenue with website and email conversions optimizations. And in addition, she helps her clients quintuple at least, I might pronounce it correctly. Quintuple, yeah, quintuple. Their revenues. Alissa is my ESL teacher, just Reese. So, you know.

Alissa  2:51 

It’s a hard work. She’s a big one.

Vira  2:53 

I mean, yeah, I’m learning something new every day. And Reese lived in Malaysia for seven years, and she returned to her home of Northern Michigan, where she lives with her husband and her dog, and she’s a very proud introvert. She loves a fall soup and is constantly playing a Spotify mix of elians, Morissette and Eddie money Reese. We’re super, super happy to have you here on our podcast today.

Reese  3:22 

I’m so happy to be here, and I just forgot that I updated the last line of my bio for you. It used to be playing a mix of Taylor Swift and Toto, but I upgraded lately to Alanis Morissette and Eddie money.

Alissa  3:33 

Oh, Taylor Swift and Toto. I like that mix. I like it.

Vira  3:37 

It’s my vibe. It’s still kind of my vibe. 30 year old women and I’m still into Taylor Swift. Oh, well, that’s totally my vibe.

Vira  4:12 

Aissa, I know you have prepared a cool little game.

Alissa  4:16 

Yes, yeah. So we actually as kind of a precursor to this game. We told Reese about it before we started recording, and she was like, oh shit, I’m so bad at these. So I’m hoping this will be a little more entertaining than what we usually see. But Reese, are you ready? We call this blitz Q and A. So basically, what we’re going to do is we’re going to ask you a list of different questions, and then the first answer that comes to mind just go ahead and blurt it out. Are you ready?

Reese  4:43 

I don’t have a choice in the matter, so hit me up. Yeah.

Alissa  4:47 

Okay, so are you a cat person or a dog person?

Reese  4:52 

Dog.

Vira  4:53 

Some crazy one, right?

Reese  4:55 

Yeah, totally. I like cats as well, they’re fine, okay.

Alissa  4:58 

Okay, that’s all right. Then that’s all right. So if you could learn one new personal skill, what would it be?

Reese  5:05 

Oh, good lord, okay, I would learn how to make gelato.

Alissa  5:12 

Oh, I like that. That’s very, very unique. I love that answer.

Vira  5:17 

I’m totally adding you to my friends list on Facebook quest.

Reese  5:23 

You know how I use said I lived in Malaysia. My goal, dream would be to take the flavors from Southeast Asia and bring them into the west with gelato. And now what’s going to happen? Inevitably, someone will hear this podcast is going to take that idea and roll with it long before I can.

Alissa  5:41 

So that leads us to our next question. Malaysian food, yay or nay.

Reese  5:45 

Yay.

Alissa  5:46 

Awesome. Okay, this one might be tough. So if you had to describe yourself as a food, what would you be?

Reese  5:53 

This is not so tough. I had to do this for a program I run, so I would be I did it with vegetable, and I said I would be kale, Russian kale, because they are hardy. They come up every year without me having to replant them again. They live all year long, through winter, the reliable and almost every nutrient you need is sitting in that piece of kale.

Alissa  6:15 

Wow. I like it. I like it very well thought out. Yeah, I know if that works, that works really well.

Reese  6:22 

I know I got really lucky. I think.

Alissa  6:22 

Oh, I like this one. I like this one. Okay, what is your power song?

Vira  6:29 

It’s got to be Taylor Swift.

Alissa  6:31 

No, it’s got to be something Taylor Swift. Is my thinking.

Reese  6:33 

It is. But why can’t I think of which one it might be? Come on you guys got to help me. Like I love 1989 that’s my favorite album of hers. So it’s, yep, it needs to be something off of that. I’m thinking, oh, so is someone looking it up? It sounds like it.

Alissa  6:53 

I am. I am. I am looking this up right now. So what about so shake it off. Bad Blood. Classic. Bad Blood is a badass song. Blank Space. That’s my jam. I think that’s my jam. Welcome to New York style. Out of the woods. I wish you would while the streams.

Reese  7:17 

Think.

Alissa  7:17 

How you get the girl. I know places clean, just listing them all.

Reese  7:26 

No, you are, I guess, I guess I’d have to stay out of the woods. But I got another one for you that I forgot about. I really like, Have you heard of the band The Killers?

Alissa  7:37 

Yes, yep.

Reese  7:39 

So they got this song called Miss atomic bomb, and it really I play that when I need to get my shit together and do something. So it’s an power song for me.

Alissa  7:48 

Okay, cool. I like it. I like it. Okay. And then very last one, baby panda or baby Penguin.

Reese  7:55 

Penguin.

Vira  7:56 

Yay.

Alissa  7:57 

I love it. Okay, awesome. Okay. So now that we’ve got the serious stuff out of the way. Let’s get to the fun stuff. So Reese, we’ll start, and we usually start our interviews in this way. Tell us about yourself and more specifically, how did you get into E commerce?

Reese  8:12 

Yeah, well, I’ll answer the second part first, because I basically saw an underserved but growing market in E commerce. And my background for more than 15 years was in website design and copywriting, and a few years ago, I began to take on more e commerce clients, and what I found was the unique needs of this particular type of business is a really good fit for how my brain works, because for me as a designer, it’s always been really important that design is usable, it’s functional, and that the copywriting is more about them, the end customer, the end person reading it, than the person who’s writing it. And when you put those two things together and you do them, well, that’s when e commerce is done, right? But I actually saw a lot of E commerce sites that are they’re missing the mark on these. And I don’t mean that in a judgey way. I just think people are not educated well on this and on how to put this all together. And so that’s why I shifted my business primarily on E commerce, because I also saw, like, this industry is booming, right? I could see the writing on the wall.

Alissa  9:16 

That’s perfect.

Vira  9:17 

Yeah, totally, totally.

Alissa  9:18 

It seems like you really predicted that. Well, given the last year that we’ve had, e commerce seems to be the one, and only now, with everything that’s happened. So yeah, when there are a ton of people who I know Vira can can speak to this too, is when everything started to kind of when she hit the fan. Let’s just put it bluntly, right? We at Flowium. Were like, oh my gosh, what is this going to do? How is this going to impact us? And it impacted us in the exact opposite, opposite way that it did for a lot of other people. And we’re all just kind of shrugged our shoulders, and we were like, Okay, I guess e commerce is the place to be. So you definitely called it. I would say for sure.

Reese  9:55 

I had the same thing. I remember back in March slash April. I was, I’m not the kind of person who gets really overly worried. But I was thinking, you know, what’s what’s going to happen? What’s going to happen to my business? And, holy crap, like everything, right? Just like we did for you.

Vira  10:13 

Oh yeah, yeah. 100% and, I mean, you’ve started sort of talking about design briefly, and I can’t tell you how many times, like, we have this new client or with a stunning website, but when you go there and you start like, searching for a particular product on the web, and you’re very like drawn to do the website, because the graphics is amazing. The design is like beautiful. Imagery is beautiful, but you try to navigate to a page where you can actually learn more about the product, but you become confused, and you get lost, and you have no idea what to do next, and you get frustrated, and you ended up like leaving that website, and you keep telling that pre D doesn’t sell. So what does sell? Rhys, what does sell? And what do the biggest dogs of E commerce do differently?

Reese  11:01 

I appreciate this question so much. First, what you just described, what you experience, the beauty is actually getting in the way, right? And, yeah, it’s true. It is, and it’s it’s almost like it’s too much noise, even if it looks really pretty. And the opposite is not what people need to do. I’m not at all advocating that we need to be ugly, right? I basically see when someone’s new to e commerce, they’ll get fixated on one of two things when it comes to how their website looks. Is what you described. So they either think it needs to be very stylish, trendy, like this, gorgeous, subtle, new tone color palette, they think the wrong things need to be emphasized, like their company logo, right, or big beautiful fashion headlines and like you described so well Vira that has nothing to do to help people make a buying decision. The other thing that people will do that I often see is they they get fixated on adding a lot of bells and whistles, things that are animated, things that are popping up making I used to work with clients all the time that wanted their logo bigger, and I it was very hard for me to explain to them, like, how is this helping your customer? Do they care about the size of your logo and the sites that are high converting, that are made and designed for converting they actually use really clean and minimal foundations. And what if this does? It makes the products the star of the show. Okay?

Reese  12:29 

And there’s a very intentional structure to their layout and what’s emphasized. So, for example, in one of the trainings I created for the group program, I won for women in E commerce, it’s all about how to make a high converting homepage e commerce homepage, and there’s context that goes into this decision making. So for example, if you have a really small catalog and you’re an indie brand, you don’t have a lot of PR, you don’t have big brand recognition, you probably want to structure that homepage in a way that tells the story of your products and brand through the lens of your customer, through what’s going to grab and hold your customer. And if you have a bigger catalog, right, like you’ve got, let’s just throw out 30 or 50 SKUs or more, right? You need to approach it a little bit differently, and you I advise them like to make a hierarchy on their homepage that show your products they’re organized and grouped together in a way that helps customers really quickly understand what categories and products are relevant to them. But if you’ll notice, I didn’t say you need to have the most beautiful color palette or big fonts, a more minimal palette, a focus on your products, little bits of text that help your customer understand what’s in it. For them, is so much more important than pretty or fancy. And if you think about a brand like Apple, and you go and you look at their website and what they do, it’s mostly white, they’ve got product pictures and headlines, and your eye is moved down this page in a really intentional way. So that’s what I mean by pretty doesn’t, isn’t what is going to sell.

Vira  13:58 

Yeah, and there is this brand, and it’s not a brand. They are architectural bureau. They are super famous in Europe. It’s called B arc angels group. And these guys are obviously all about design. They build the most baddest buildings, like, in the world, like, literally, right now. But when you go to their website, it’s like, the most confusing thing ever, like, literally, ever. You cannot find like about the brand. I mean, it looks amazing. It’s very beautiful because they are so, like, design oriented. But just like you said, Reese, sometimes it has to be about the product and not about you necessarily, because the product is the star of the show. So I love how you put it. That’s awesome. Yeah, yeah.

Alissa  14:38 

So aside from, like, overly phenomenal, pretty, wonderful, beautiful, incredible design that is clearly not directed towards, like, easy customer use. What would you say Reese are the three biggest problems on websites that typically send customers away or make them just leave the site out of frustration, so out of all the prettiness, what are like? Kind of the. Three biggest mistakes that people make? Would you say?

Reese  15:02 

Yeah, it’s hard a list. Alissa, to narrow it down to three, but these are, I’m going to list more common ones I see that are really big issues. So the first one is your website’s loading too slowly, and speed rules the game right now. Yeah. Google’s research shows that if someone comes to your website on their phone, and we know like this is happening, more and more people are shopping on their phones, 50% of people who visit on their phone is going to are going to leave if that site isn’t loading in three seconds or less. And you fix this by reducing the script you’re using, by optimizing your image, you you can also do things like something called lazy loading. It delays the loading of images until a certain point in the browsing process. And fixing and diagnosing speed issues is a bit of a landmine, but I want to, for your average person listening, share a free tool I like to recommend so they can get an idea of where they’re at and what might be creating more weight on their site. And it’s, yeah. All you do is you go to tools.pingdom.com, and you pop your website URL into there, and kind of get a diagnosis of where you’re at. And then that way, you’ll know if my site is loading at nine seconds. Yeah, that video you’re loading at the top of the page isn’t doing you anything.

Alissa  16:19 

Right. Yeah.

Reese  16:21 

Yeah. So that’s number one and number two. I’m so curious how often you ladies see this. People have social media icons in the header of their website. Let’s think about what happens they click that, and the assumption on the business owner is this, well, they’ll go follow me on Instagram or Facebook, right? No, they’re gonna go to Instagram and go see like what cousin Bob is up to, or whatever it is that interest, and they have forgotten about you, and you have just sent them off your website. That’s just, they do not belong in the header. They need to be in the footer. So the fix is move them down to the footer and do not make them obvious. Don’t make them different colors, make them subtle, subdued and optional. Basically. What do you think? Do you see this a lot?

Vira  17:06 

Same, same in emails? Actually, I’ve noticed, and we work with E commerce emails, so that’s our like specialization. And I’ve noticed, oftentimes people do have this beautiful footers, or not a footers the headers in the emails that send people to their Facebook group or to their Instagram or something, and, yeah, and when we are looking at how many people are clicked to what links, usually the top CTAs get the most clicks. And it’s like naturally, because that’s like the way we browse, right? So instead of going to the main email, CTA, which was the, actually the idea, the main idea, at the beginning, to send those people to, like, that certain web page or something, they are going to Instagram. You were 100% right on this one, and I never even thought about it this way. But now, when you said it, I’m like, yeah, yeah.

Alissa  17:55 

We have to look out for that stuff. Yeah, for sure. And that’s why, like, whenever a client wants to incorporate, like, a YouTube video on their YouTube channel or whatever. We try to stay as far away from that as possible in emails, because people click on it, and then once you’re in the YouTube black hole, that’s yeah, the end of your next three days. So yeah, worth like, let’s not leave people that went that way. Let’s keep them on your website. So that totally makes sense.

Reese  18:19 

Absolutely yes. And I feel like we could probably come in for a separate podcast and go down a whole darn rabbit hole, because I’d love to hear you talk about using fancy graphics and emails like HTML emails, and making them look too pretty, but that will completely like sidetrack us from this. But it just made me think about what you must deal with at times, with clients in emails and then also doing what we’ve just talked about, trying to make it look too fancy or pretty, right?

Vira  18:45 

Yeah, we are constantly, like, testing the email. We do the AB testing. And I was surprised how many times the simple emails perform better than those, like fancy HTML ones. When you’re like, literally sending the text email, text based email, that’s it. No header image, no hero image, no, nothing. And very often they do perform much better in terms of like engagement and click through rates, and even for some reason, open rates. So yeah, that’s interesting to see this things.

Reese  19:11 

Yes. And I think a lot of it is because a customer sees that email and they think it’s an ad, and no one wants to read an ad. That’s true. They want to read a letter from a human being. Yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah. So let’s, let’s talk about not the third one that will send people away from your site. The website isn’t focused on the customer. So what I mean is the business is using words like language, and words like I, me, US, and they have copy that’s about their features or their research and development. We spent 20 years making this thing, and it’s like they have product pages with maybe one to two photos and a really cursory, bland product description, and there’s no information to help your customer make a buying decision. So the fix to this is to remember that customers care about themselves and they want to know. Really quickly, like how your product will solve a problem for them or a desire, or both, and they need to understand so what they don’t care about you. They care about whatever it is that you’re offering can do for them.

Vira  20:13 

Yeah, yeah. I totally agree. And it just that gives me some flashbacks from the 90s, when they had this, like shampoo commercials, and they were talking about the formula and what peptides they are using, and like the guys, the doctors in white coats, were explaining the chemistry behind it, I was like, No, that’s not what I care about. I just want my hair to look like Priyanka Chopra’s hair. That’s pretty much all I want. And that’s, yeah, that’s totally, totally true, exactly.

Reese  20:43 

And since you since Flowium is all about email, this even comes into play on the website, where I see a lot of times people will have email lists sign up like they’ll have a box for it, or it’s in the footer. And inevitably, the text I see is something like, sign up for our newsletter, which is all about them. It’s all about the business, and if you think about it from the customer’s point of view, why would I do that? You have given Me no compelling reason to do that. So when you shift your thinking to be more customer centric, it sounds like this, get weekly authentic Malaysian recipes free in your inbox, right? You need to offer a carrot, an incentive, and you need to make it about the customer no one’s sign up for your newsletter just because you think it’s right, right, right?

Alissa  21:26 

Yeah, it’s very true. And also people will maybe sign up if it looks cool, but the looking cool only goes so far, so going back to that pretty doesn’t really sell. It’s making it customer centric, like you’re talking about. So that makes really sense.

Vira  21:39 

We literally just talked about it yesterday, right? I know the pop up forms and exit intent forms, welcome forms delivering some sort of value. So that’s, that’s what we are all about, and Flowium delivering the value before asking them to do something.

Alissa  21:53 

So, yeah, correct. I’m writing notes here where I’m like, Wow. I think I’ve been strategizing some of my emails all wrong, because sometimes you focus so much on like, wow, this product or this brand has done X, Y and Z, but realistically, the customer doesn’t care unless it has a direct impact on them. So because the brand has done X, Y and Z, what does that mean for the customer? If it doesn’t mean anything, then there’s no point in talking about it. So definitely something that’s noteworthy. I’m actually like, here taking notes on my on my side of things.

Reese  22:23 

Alissa, too. I’m so glad you brought that up, because you just helped give a really good tip for people, which is this, you need to connect the dots. So you might have something that’s really interesting in your product, but people cannot, usually, for themselves, connect the.as to why this matters in their life. It’s either they’re unable to they can’t think that way, or they’re impatient. They don’t have the time. So you need to say, well, in the case of Vira’s example, our shampoo has peptides which help make your hair shiny and bouncy, like whoever it was you said that you like hair, Yep, yeah.

Vira  22:59 

Yeah, for sure. And I’ve noticed with some of my clients that usually the best performing emails are those before afters. You know, the best performing campaigns. So here is how your eyelashes looked before our eyelash serum, and here is an after. And I’m a sucker for this kind of content too. I just want to know what this product can do for me. I don’t care as much about how adequately sourced you are, but maybe it’s just like me, but I just care about the result, and that’s like, number one thing for me. And then I go and check out their story and check whether or not they are, like, organic certified and stuff like that. But that’s that’s like, my personal preference. I know that a lot of people might view it differently.

Reese  23:42 

Yeah, yeah. I think we’re going to talk about that a little bit when we in this interview, when we talk about the customer journey, because I want to address what you were saying. You might see it one way, and another customer might see it another way. And there’s ways to make sure, right, that we appeal to both of those types of customer.

Vira  24:00 

Let’s actually talk about customer journey right now. Can you briefly explain to those of our listeners who never heard this term before, like, what is customer journey and what does it mean from the website design standpoint?

Reese  24:14 

Sure, there’s a few different frameworks, I guess, for explaining the customer journey, but I’m going to try to simplify it and basically think about it instead of a multi like, tons of different phases. Let’s just think that our customers first need to become aware of us, like they don’t even know about us. So that’s one part. That’s one like, stop on the path of the customer journey, and then after they become aware, they move into a phase where they’re starting to make a decision as to whether our products are right for them, right? They’re kind of researching. They’re mulling it around in their brain. They may be comparing it to other products, and then, you know, again, wrapped up in a tight bow. Ultimately, they move into a phase where they’re ready to make a buying decision, but they purchase. Yes, and after that, sometimes, after that purchase decision is made, is really an opportunity to continue to be in a long term relationship with your customer, because getting them to that purchase phase, like that kind of final phase in the customer journey, is the hardest thing to do, and then once they made a purchase, it’s a lot easier to resell to them. But those are the three basic phases, and these things apply in all facets of your marketing, whether it’s we’re talking emails, social media, your website, Facebook ads, and in terms of the website, I can break down for you if you want, what kinds of things you might want to look at in those three different phases, awareness, decision, and purchase. Would you like that?

Vira  25:41 

Yeah. Absolutely.

Alissa  25:42 

That would be amazing.

Reese  25:45 

So the first part, their awareness phase, one thing I want to say is your approach here may need to change and shift, depending on the context. And I’ll give you a really concrete example, if someone is coming to a dedicated land product landing page that you’ve made for just one product, and they’re coming off a Facebook ad, they’re going to have a different level of awareness and a different even level of desire, maybe, than someone who arrived at the blog on your website because they did an organic Google search related to whatever product it is you’re Selling. So with that in mind, from a broader perspective, your goal, your key goal, in this awareness phase is you need to hook them. You need to grab their attention very quickly. And you do this with the images you choose, the copy headlines you write. You need to make them aware your products are solving a very specific problem or fulfilling a specific desire. So if you use generic images, and you use generic copy something that can easily like, go on one of your competitors site, and no one would know the difference, that’s not going to work.

Reese  26:50 

Okay, you need to be super, super specific. Or, if they’re in the awareness stage, and they’ve landed on your blog because they got there, say, through that Google search or some other search you need to, let’s just respect our customer and give them enough time to read the freaking thing right before you load your popover window, before you start trying to push your products on them. Can I get an amen in the house, like you’re reading a blog you landed there in five seconds later. It’s like, want to hop into bed with me. It’s just so disrespectful, right? Agree. It’s true. It’s true. It’s very true. Yeah. So let’s meet them where they are. Let them read, let them dig a bit. Maybe you slip in a link to another article on your site that you want them to read. Maybe you slip in a link to one of your products. So the other thing, and we touched on it in the awareness phase, is this, your site must load quickly. We’ve covered it, but you’re going to lose them, particularly in the awareness phase, because they have no skin in the game with you. They don’t know anything about you. The longer your site takes to load, the more they’re going to be like, Eh, I’m out of here. Yeah. There’s no loyalty at this point. So we need to grab their attention. We need to hook them, and we need to make sure it’s happening really quickly. So that’s awareness.

Reese  28:02 

When you’re in a decision phase, they’re already aware of you. They’re either aware of you, or they’re aware that they have a problem and they’re looking for a product to solve this problem. Okay, so it’s one, usually one of those two things. Basically, at this point, what you need on your website, you need enough data to help them make a decision. So really tangibly, if we think about your product pages, you want to make information that fits different personality types. And this is what I was getting at a little bit earlier. Vira is you might have people who are really logical, so you want to make sure, if it’s relevant, that you have product specs for these people. These are, like the just the facts. Kind of people give it to me straight up, they need to have really, like, brass tax information. But for the people who want descriptions that paint a picture of how your product will change their life, you need to have copy that meets them emotionally. You need photos that show your product, like, straight up, like, hey, here it is at different angles. You can zoom in, and then you also maybe want to show a couple of lifestyle photos so that people could imagine your product how it might be for them to use it.

Reese  29:07 

Right when we see it used by another human being, it helps us imagine how we might use it ourselves. So you can see how, like in that decision phase, we want to give them enough data and information to make that decision. So that’s, that’s the decision phase. And then we’ve got the purchase phase. And this is, I’m looking at this like, this is when they’ve probably added the thing to their cart, a product to the cart, or they’re, they’re ready to they’re just at that point. So what needs to happen on your website at this point? The most important thing is it’s got to be frictionless. There is nothing standing in the way of them checking out or adding to the cart. So let me give you some examples of friction. You don’t have your shipping fees and policies in a really obvious place, and they’re going to get shocked later with a shipping fee that they didn’t expect. Okay, or not having a digital wallet.

Reese  29:59 

Um. But that can make it so much faster to check out. And then you can also put in things that help reduce their pain, because if this is the point, they’re pulling out their wallets, their you know, their virtual wallets, they’re going to pay money. They’re really reluctant, right? They’re partying with their money. So you need to put things in there that’s going to that are going to help them feel better about that. So these are things like, if you have a guarantee, maybe a logo that shows you have a guarantee, like 30 days, or your money, you know, get your money back, or trust seals that show that you have a secure site, you know, that McAfee or someone has signed off on it. And then when they’re in checkout, let’s talk about, how do you reduce friction once they’ve actually, like, added to the cart, they’re on the checkout page, you want your forms to be, autofill forms. Digital wallets help with this. But if you, if they aren’t using a digital wallet, it’s, I’m curious. If you guys have seen this, I love this. You go to start typing your street address, and they come up with address suggestions, yeah, yeah, and then yeah, when you pick one, how cool is it, especially when you’re on your phone that they just filled in the city and the state and the zip for you, like, it’s just making it that much quicker, right?

Alissa  31:04 

Yeah, so much easier. Oh my gosh, so much easier.

Reese  31:07 

Yeah. Or, like, here’s another one when they’re in the checkout process, let’s say you have three steps to check out. So step one is your billing information. Step two is shipping. Is step three is checkout. Thank you. Well, there may be more, there may be less, but let them know where they’re at. Don’t assume the customer knows this. So you can put a little navigation in your checkout process that’s like, shows you all three steps and that they’re on, like a placeholder, like, basically you are here, sort of things so that they know how much is How involved is this going to be? How much time is this going to take me? Where am I at in the process, because this helps deal with people’s impatience and the fact that they hate uncertainty. So we’re addressing those things, and that’s what you do when they are in that purchase, part of the journey to help really make it less painful for them and make them not have any friction or roadblocks to making that final purchase.

Vira  31:58 

I’m like taking notes as we speak.

Alissa  32:00 

I know, yeah, I like my my notebook is packed right now.

Vira  32:04 

I have, like, certain clients in mind who I know I can now improve their checkout process. And like on the other end of the spectrum, there are brands who make you register.

Alissa  32:14 

Oh my god, like not do this.

Vira  32:16 

I don’t even know if they are still doing that. But, like, a year ago, I saw this brands, for sure, but Oh, my goodness. Like, that’s was the reason why I didn’t purchase from them, because they made me register. I’m lazy. For this kind of worse, like, the worst I know, right, don’t make people register to check out. Oh, my goodness. Reese, is this like customer journey is, do you think it’s like, different for brands, depending on like what they are selling and like how expensive the product is, or is it like this, pretty much the same for everyone.

Reese  32:49 

Well, I definitely think that there’s some differences, and let’s just think about it really, practically and logically. If you have a $25 ring that you’re selling versus a $450 watch.

Vira  33:02 

Light.

Reese  33:03 

Depending on who your customer is, there’s going to be a longer journey in general, with the watch, and more than that, that buyer of that watch is going to want even more extensive information than the buyer of the ring. So when we get into those price ranges, and you’re talking about something like a watch at 450 bucks, or engagement rings that are 25 $50,000 your customer is going to want to know things like, what’s the workmanship of this product? Are there guarantees how much time was into R and D, again, keeping it customer focused. But they also want to know they can really trust you as a company, if I lose 25 bucks on a ring, I’m not going to lose sleep, but if I lose $450 on a watch, I’m going to be a little bit cranky. So do things like make sure you have contact information on your site. Make sure your site is HTTPS and loading securely and not throwing up any errors or flags. Right?

Vira  33:59 

That sounds so obvious, yet, how many brands are not doing that? It’s crazy, right?

Alissa  34:04 

Oh my gosh. There’s a client that we were working with that their website when you check out, the checkout process was so sketchy, like I was getting reimbursed for what I was paying for, and I was like, I don’t feel comfortable.

Reese  34:16 

See, imagine, like, making four or five or six figure buying decision, if you have up those kinds of red flags, that’s not going to happen. Yeah? Right. It’s not even going to happen with the $25 ring people are going to know about they can find a ring somewhere else.

Alissa  34:34 

Yeah. Well, and they’ll feel like their information is being stolen as well. It’s even beyond, like, how much money you’re actually spending. But, like, Is my information going to get compromised? Because I just plugged in my credit card on this page, you know? So, yeah, there is a whole, like a vulnerability aspect that you have to kind of coach people through, because they’re putting in very personal information on that, on that specific page of your website. So.

Reese  34:51 

100% such a good point. Yeah.

Alissa  34:53 

So Reese, going off of all of that, would you say that there are any specific ways that you can actually affect your. Average order size or profit margin per customer, specifically with website design tricks?

Reese  35:05 

Yeah, there definitely are. And you’re going to this is all a grand experiment, and I want for anyone listening to understand that I am not a believer in, like, one trick ponies or magic tricks, or, if you do this, you will, you know, quintuple like we were talking about the beginning of the interview, your conversion rate. It just, there’s a lot that goes into this, but let’s talk about three different things that you can try that probably stand if your website in general is set up pretty well, are going to help boost that, that average order size and potentially your margins. So first is this, after they add something to your cart, what you do is you you need a plugin or a developer to help you do this, but you then show them related products, and you suggest you might also like this. And it’s really important that the related products make sense to what they added to their cart. So if I’ve just added a dress to my cart. Don’t suggest a laptop to me. It makes sense, right?

Alissa  36:04 

Yeah, totally. That’s hillarious.

Reese  36:07 

How you could, like, you could take this Alissa and make it so that you’re suggesting items that you know internally have a higher profit margin to you the business owner, right? So that’s one way you could tweak it so that then, especially if you’re the dress that I just added to my cart is a really low profit margin item for you, well, then you suggest to me a hat, a handbag, whatever shoes that have higher profit margins to you. And that makes sense with that dress. So that’s number one. But you can do this same tactic on the checkout page, and what you do is, they’ve made it to checkout. And one really cool thing that you can do is, let’s say you have a shipping minimum, which a lot of stores do. What you do is, what I’ve seen happen is they’ll say, all right, you’re $10 away from tree shipping.

Reese  36:30 

And they leave it at that. And they leave it up to the customer to try and figure out how to fulfill that. But what if instead you help them by saying, like, here are a few items we think you might also like to help you meet that shipping minimum, and then you aren’t making them think too hard. So again, maybe you suggest some of your higher profit margin items that also make sense with what’s in their cart, like at the checkout point. And then third is you can offer bundles. You’ll see this a lot on Amazon, but ecom stores can do this. So if you buy the dress plus shoes plus sunglasses, when you buy all three, it’s $90 but if you buy them separately, it’s 110 for example. And so the customer is happy because she’s getting a great deal. She’s getting 20 bucks. But what you are doing is maybe in these bundles, you could use it for one or two things. You could either use it to bundle in your products that have those higher profit margins for you, or, let’s say you’ve got some slow movers, you’ve got stock in the back you really need to offload. This is a really great way to move that stock and get it out in this kind of bundle. So do those make sense? Like, those are things you can do right on the website in that checkout process to improve those average order values and even your profit margins?

Alissa  38:08 

Yeah, for sure. And you know, it’s interesting, this is something that kind of a topic that we’ve been talking about a lot internally, where I think, because we’re in the digital space, we forget that what we are basically trying to do in the digital space is mimic the same experience that a customer would have at a brick and mortar in the digital space. So when it comes to having to meet that minimum shipping requirement, right, you should be doing everything that you can on your website and during that checkout experience to offer whatever you can in order to help the customer reach that so in the same way that when you’re in a store and they say, like, oh, when you spend $100 you will get $25 back, or whatever it is, and you go to checkout and you’re at $94.97 usually the person at checkout says, Oh, you need to pay another $5.03 here are a couple of items that I’ll recommend that you can add to your orders so you can Get that special perk that we were talking about. And so when we don’t do that in the digital space, we’re missing the mark. Because that’s why brick and mortar stores did so well for so long, you know, prior to the pandemic and everything, they did so well for so long. Now everything’s shifting into the digital but we don’t want to get rid of those little experiences that people were still having in the brick and mortar. So so on board with what you’re suggesting, because I think it makes total total total sense.

Reese  39:23 

I love that, and if I might like, just add a couple things sure, bouncing off what you said that I think will help people is we have to try, in as much as possible, in the digital space, make these more human connections and not assume people know what we’re doing, right? And you just illustrated that really well. Like, what would a human being do in this situation? And then what? Since you asked about profit margins, I believe, and I’m I don’t have the research to back this up, but I think I had heard once, a lot of times, when we’re checking out at the clothing store or whatever those items that are by checkout, those point of purchase ones tend to have higher margins. Use for the store, and that’s why they place them there. They’re impulse purchases. So let’s think about what you just said, Alissa, I love like, what happens in the non digital world? How do we mimic that whole experience, that relationship in our digital experiences?

Alissa  40:16 

Yeah, for sure. And it’s like the we brought this example up a few weeks ago, one of our account managers internally was like, Sephora and like Ulta. They always get me because, as you’re checking out, you have that huge little like rack section of all like the minis and the samples and the products that they’re trying to push on you, right in the center there, and then you end up spending like, another 50 bucks on just these random little nonsense items that you’re like, ah, they totally got me at checkout. You know, you went in to get your big products, but then you basically get swamped with all these little things that really catch your attention as you’re checking out, and then your your order value ends up being so much higher. So trying to do that in the digital space as well as Yeah, but I love that the human connection is what sometimes people really miss out on in the digital space, so it’s definitely major key when it comes to doing these things.

Reese  41:06 

Yeah, yeah, you reminded me of something I want to share in case it just inspires people listening. One of the things that Ulta will do, and I think Sephora at times, this can help with increasing that average order value is they’ll take a higher ticket item. And if you look, say, on a product listing page, so we’re not on the individual product page, but you’re on the product listing page, they’ll flag certain products to say, like gift with purchase. If you go and you look at this product, and this could help you potentially move a product that has a higher profit margin, it’s another method that I had forgotten about that you can utilize to help get people to buy something that’s pricier. Give them a gift with purchase, like, mimic what these stores, like Sephora and Alta are doing, and bring them into your own site, but make sure people know it. Make sure they see that on the category listing page, right, like there’s some little flag that says gift with purchase, and then on the product page itself, make it super obvious.

Alissa  41:58 

Yeah, I love that. So definitely a ton of a ton of tricks that you can do. So Reese, couple more questions just to end off our interview today, which thank you so much for being on here, because you’ve provided a ton of tremendous insight. Like I mentioned before, my notebook page is like all these like little notes and arrows and pointing. And I’m like, do this now, do that. This client, this, this, this, it’s like all over the place. But what advice would you give to someone who’s just starting out with building their own website? Like, what’s like? The number one thing that you would say is a really good starting point or a really good thing to keep at the forefront of their mind as they’re building their website.

Reese  42:32 

It’s hard to pick just one, so I would say, Don’t overcomplicate things. Don’t pick a theme just because you think it looks fancy or like something a fashion designer would choose, like we talked about in the beginning. Look at those theme reviews. See what people are saying about its speed and usability. But what I would say is equally as important, if not more, is don’t rush into just getting all the website up if you have not spent your time researching and understanding your customer from the start. And if you’re new, and that’s scary, it’s fine if you evolve this as you go, as what you if what you learn about your customer changes as you go. But with every decision you make on your website, your emails, your visuals, your copywriting, your social media posts, ask yourself, this is this decision about me, and what I think looks cool or fancy or fun, or it sounds good, or is this about my customer and what she needs to know to feel connected to my products and eventually buy from me?

Alissa  43:31 

Yeah, I love it. Very sound wise advice. Reese, thank you so so much for joining us today. One of the things that we like to end off whenever we have an interview, where can our listeners find you? And guys, just for those of you who are listening, we’ll have all the links in the description below, but we like to hear it from our guests directly. Where is the best place for them to find you? If they want more info on you, things that you’re doing, any courses that you may have up and running for them to kind of participate in? What’s the best method?

Reese  43:57 

I would love it if they reach out to me on my website because I have a free gift for them that I think they might like. If that’s okay Alissa?

Alissa  44:05 

Love it. Totally. Love it. Absolutely. That’s what we’re all about, is trying to give freebies to our listeners. So we’re on board with that.

Reese  44:12 

Well, and we talked about that a bit in this conversation. Like give people an incentive. Why should they? So the reason why is I have 10 website mistakes that are losing you leads and sales, and how to fix them fast, some of them we covered, but there’s more that we didn’t, and you can get that at design by reese.com forward slash fixes, fixes, f, i, x, E, S, super short and easy, and I would love it if people, once they grab this freebie and they get some value and education from it, if they reach out to me and they reply, I reply to every email I receive sincerely, so awesome. Yeah, I’d love to talk with you.

Alissa  44:52 

Amazing, amazing, amazing. Well, Reese, thank you again. So so much. This has been awesome, and you’ve been just. Just a joy to chat with, and we had a blast chatting with you before the podcast anyway, laughing it up and everything. So really, really appreciate it, and thank you again. So much.

Reese  45:09 

Thank you so much too. It was an honor to be here, and I really appreciated this conversation.

Alissa  45:14 

Thank you.

Vira  45:15  

Thank you so much for being with us here today. Thanks so much for listening to this podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, because this would mean the world to us. And if you want to get involved in a community of awesome e commerce, email marketers and entrepreneurs, just join us at flowium.com/community, and definitely come back next Tuesday, because next Tuesday we’ll have a very special guest with us, we’ll have Marcus Sheridan, famous author and businessman and entrepreneur, who basically knows how to revolutionize your business through that they ask you answer method, and he did it with his own Business. He created number one ranked website in his industry, and he will teach you how to do the same. So definitely come back next Tuesday. Thank you for being with us, and we hope to see you back here.