2X eCommerce Podcast

Kunle Campbell (00:01.226)
Hey, Matthew, welcome to the 2X Ecommerce Podcast.

Matthew Stafford (00:04.526)
How are you doing?

Kunle Campbell (00:06.954)
I'm all right. I'm all right. I'm going to just jump right straight in. What in your opinion is the difference between a $1 million ecommerce business and a $10 million ecommerce business?

Matthew Stafford (00:21.518)
Um, for me, I would say in all reality, it's the owner. Um, and because I believe that the owner has, um, the responsibility and also the, um,

creates the atmosphere that's required to do that. And so the cadence of a $10 million store is quite a bit more than a 1 million store. And so there's a lot of things that have to happen to make that work. One would be obviously the website needs to convert, um, at a high level.

which is the area that we take care of. You need to have very good tracking so that your data is correct. We always say garbage in, garbage out. And so if your data is not clean, you're making decisions from false pretenses. And so, yeah, I would say it's a myriad of things that you would have to graduate through in order to go from that 1 million to 10 million.

but it can happen quite quickly.

Kunle Campbell (01:28.682)
What's in the owner? What makes, what habits or what routines does a $1 million founder have different from a 10 million?

Matthew Stafford (01:43.47)
I'm sorry, you were froze. I couldn't hear the question.

Kunle Campbell (01:46.922)
So what routines would a or what habits distinguish or separate a $1 million dollar e -commerce owner from a $10 million dollar e -commerce owner?

Matthew Stafford (02:00.142)
Yeah, that's a great question. I would say for one, they're very good at delegating and not just delegating, but establishing accountability because if you just pass it off and are not, don't have the details that you need, I've seen it and witnessed it where the store is actually very successful, but the business.

struggles and that is because of the systems and processes that are in place don't handle the cadence of volume. A lot of times where I see that the most is around customer support. So,

they're more focused on the ones that fail or the ones that struggle is they're more focused on sales than they are on the customer experience and making sure that the follow through is done correctly. And so I would say, yeah, the biggest difference is one is front end focused. The very successful ones are more backend focused.

Kunle Campbell (03:12.618)
Should a store doing $1 million or less focus on conversion rates optimization?

Matthew Stafford (03:22.126)
Uh, yes. Yeah. I would say, um, the people or the experience that we've had helping, you know, hundreds of them get over that million dollar mark and, and tens, I would say, I think we're probably close to 30 or 40 hitting the $10 million mark. The difference is, um,

Kunle Campbell (03:23.454)
Why?

Matthew Stafford (03:46.19)
where we see the hockey stick growth is when they're doing that a hundred to 250 ,000 a month. So they know they have a good product. They know they have an audience, but their store isn't optimized. And when they optimize their store, that gives them the ability to scale very fast. And we've taken, you know, several of them from that 200 grand a month to a million dollar a month, you know, in three to four months. So, uh, yeah, I think that's.

the smaller the store is, the more valuable it is. The larger your store gets, you tend to have a lot of repeat customers. You have an audience. The traffic tends to convert a little bit better just because of the brand awareness.

Kunle Campbell (04:35.178)
So talk me through a business doing 100K and using CRO to get to 500K or more. What would they typically not have done that when they do from a CRO perspective, because you're a CRO expert, what will they do from a CRO perspective? What would they not have done to, and change to really sort of get that hockey stick?

you do it too, anyway.

Matthew Stafford (05:05.486)
Yeah. So a lot of times they're still using a stock theme or they've, you know, it's been a bunch of me too. They've seen a YouTube video that said, do this or do that. And so they've made a few changes. Um, two things, one, they need to get their Google analytics and tag manager set up correctly.

So that they're not guessing or using their gut to, oh, I think this will work. And then changing a bunch of stuff and not knowing what's really creating the win or the loss. And then once you have your data correct, as you and I were discussing earlier, we always start at the back of the store first, because if your checkout is broken or your checkout's not optimized, that's the very...

quickest way to generate more revenue. And so if it's converting at 1 % or 2%, and we can flip that switch so that it's converting 20, 30 % better, then all of a sudden you now have more money to spend in order to get the systems and things in place. And so then we would go from there to the cart. We'd make sure that the cart is optimally converting. And we have a bunch of metrics just from our...

you know, our, uh, I would say our best practices from the years of doing it. So your cart should be no less than 50 % of people who add to cart, make it into the proceed to checkout. And then the completed sale should be no less than 50 % of the people that made it into, you know, proceed to check out from the cart. And if you, if those numbers aren't true, then we know that there's quite a bit of optimization that can be done there. Um,

And then from there, we would go back to the product page. So each page has a specific purpose. The product page is where you would do the selling of the product. They would have really good detailed descriptions. Maybe even, you know, the materials used, et cetera. It would be presented in a way where people can skim it rather than a wall of text. And then we...

Matthew Stafford (07:18.03)
typically believe one really good testimonial, um, anywhere near the product title or even in maybe in a tab under the description is good. We also, um, definitely believe in tabs because if you have, if you present all your information and they have to scan through it to find what they're looking for, uh, we know that that hurts conversion. So breaking it down into the segments,

and not forcing everyone to go through everything to get their questions answered will help the product page convert much higher. The other thing I would say is on that product page, you need to have a hierarchy of focus. And so what that means is your button colors stand out from your theme. They don't match your theme. You want them when they come and they land on that page, they know that the very next

most important action is add to cart. And when they do that, then the next most important action on the cart will be proceed to checkout and so on. And so then from there, we know for a fact that the product page converts much better when there's a filter in front of it. And we call that a category page. So when you have a bunch of different products, if they can filter it, um,

closer to what they're looking for before they land on the product page, they convert three to five times higher. And so a lot of times landing them on a product page is actually not the best thing. Cause you're assuming that that would be the product that they want rather than letting them see a list of categories or a list of the products and then select from there. So the category page is basically a filter. That's all it is.

It takes all the selections and the easier that you make it like Best Buy, you know, they have thousands of products, but you can use the filter down the left side and narrow it down to the top two or three that you're looking for very quickly. And so we mimic a filter page just like that. And then the home page, the purpose of that is did I land on the right site? Do they sell what I'm looking for? And then easy navigation.

Matthew Stafford (09:37.998)
So the longer they stay on your homepage, uh, the lower they convert. And, uh, a lot of people try to sell on their homepage. You'll see add to cart or quick ad or quick view, all these different things. Um, every one of those actually hurts conversions. Um, there's no way that they can add to cart, you know, say your average order value is 140, 150 bucks. Um, they don't have enough information at that point.

to make a decision of whether it's worth 150. Is it a good quality product? Do I know, like, or trust you? And so all of those things actually lower conversions and create more clicks, which creates less sales.

Kunle Campbell (10:23.754)
Okay, okay. There's there's a lot on on park, you know, from there. First, I think you explained the

the way traffic actually filters through. So say 100 people have added to cart, your expectation is that 50 of them will eventually be initiated to check out and then another 25 of them will make it to, will make it to, to, to check out, which makes a lot of sense. Okay.

Matthew Stafford (10:51.31)
purchase.

Yep. And if it's less than that, then we know that there's optimization that can be done in those steps.

Kunle Campbell (11:09.546)
OK, so just looking at a product page, right? Where do you optimize first, desktop or mobile?

Matthew Stafford (11:22.184)
Mobile for sure. So the majority of traffic now over 80 % is mobile And I say that with one caveat We certainly have some very high average order value clients that is in the two three thousand dollar range per product

And so they certainly convert higher on desktop because it takes more education. And so with those particular ones, they certainly peak their interest on mobile. And then we retarget them back to desktop in order to increase the conversions from the traffic. But yeah, we always, we would always optimize the mobile experience first and.

We consider mobile a totally different experience than desktop. So you want to maximize the real estate that you have on desktop to convert. So it means that you have some other things that you can do there that you can't do on mobile.

Kunle Campbell (12:20.682)
You spoke about the importance of like data processing the right sort of data, you know, initially before you take any action. So how do you view mobile data? Is that another sort of silo from an analysis standpoint or do you aggregate the data points and kind of like, you know, get that assessment, do your assessments break out into this is mobile, this is what desktop looks like.

Matthew Stafford (12:47.852)
Yeah, the data is totally separate. So we don't we do not mix it together and we consider tablets as well to be.

Similar to the desktop experience. So mobile is its own and then tablets and desktop and tablets and desktop in general Should convert about twice as high as your mobile does So if you have an average order, you know our average conversion of 4 % 5 % It may be six six and a half on desktop and you know three on mobile if there's if it's

If there's a bigger disparagement than that, then we go look, because we figure something's broken on one of the two different experiences and we'll check, you know, it could just be as much as like, you know, it's not displaying great on Apple devices. And because so many buyers are on Apple, we know that we'll check screen resolutions and that stuff right away. And that alone can make your, your mobile convert much better just by getting those things correct.

Kunle Campbell (13:56.586)
OK, so for platforms such as Shopify, where they're very limited, so parameters or limited things you can do, changes you can make to checkout, how do you optimize checkout on a platform like Shopify?

Matthew Stafford (14:12.162)
Yeah, so we know obviously a bunch of our stores use plus so then we get we get access to liquid code. But the other thing is there's other changes that you can do right in the form fields as far as how you display the header. Thank you page things that you can do. All of those are important and are very well thought out.

And I'll give you an example. Actually, I'll give you two examples that any of your users can use. And they will automatically like it's never not where they will automatically see an increase. So where you ask for their email, obviously, we we track form field errors. And so we tested text in there.

And so under the email section, rather than just say email, we say email required for order confirmation. And the reason why we do that, I was reading a book called biology and they basically said, people don't mind giving you information if you give them a reason why. And they use the example of cutting in line. And so if you say, Hey, can I cut in line? 80 % of the people said no.

20 % allowed them to, and then they said, Hey, do you mind if I cut line? My kids are late for school and they need to hurry up. Then it was the opposite. 80 % said yes and 20 % said no. So same request, just one had a reason. The other one didn't, and it totally flipped the equation. And we found that to be true too. And so we've tried all different texts in there and we've never been able to be required for order confirmation. And if you think about it, of all the emails sent,

for any, any purpose order confirmation averages over 80 % open rate. So it's the most open email ever. And so by telling them, Hey, we need your email for order confirmation. Uh, we tend to get a much better email and no, it reduced our number of errors by, um, hundreds of percent. It was crazy. And so by doing that, um, you also have their best email for.

Matthew Stafford (16:24.564)
abandoned cart recovery and retargeting and all the rest of the stuff that goes along with that. So that one thing right there will certainly make you more money. And also everyone knows SMS is the most valuable form of recovery right now too. It's the most opened of any type of notification. And so in the phone phone field, we don't say it's optional. We don't leave it unrequired. We also say required.

for shipping notifications and everyone wants to be notified when their product ships. And so by doing that, those two optimizations that you can do on any checkout, whether it's a Shopify plus or regular, or whether it's WooCommerce, BigCommerce, whatever, you can change the form field language. Those two changes will absolutely bring up your abandoned recovery, your conversion to sale and your SMS recovery as well.

Kunle Campbell (17:24.522)
I really like that because you're really merging that form of the fair of missing out element into the form requests into data requests. So they're taking an action to get a reward. So there's that cycle there, which is increasing conversions. Really, really good tip there. Pretty good tip. And now for Shopify merchants who have a lot more flexibility and checkout with just a liquid, what changes would you make that checkout?

to really bolster conversions because you can get the same amount of traffic, but if you double conversions, it's just less effort, max reward.

Matthew Stafford (18:03.214)
Yeah, so for sure, that's a really good place to, obviously we would use those same two optimizations, but then underneath where they put in their coupon code, we typically put testimonials because at this, this is a point where they're about to exchange money with you. And so we want them to see the other happy customers, know how many you've served.

And we use that as an example. And we've, we've tested a lot of different things and not much, uh, actually nothing, um, beats that having, uh, three to five really good testimonials down below where it has the subtotal of their, of what they're buying and how much it costs.

Kunle Campbell (18:50.088)
That's interesting. I've not seen that and it's very worthy of testing. Good stuff. And then stepping a bit further off the funnel with arts and crafts, what mistakes are merchants making with their arts and crafts experience?

Matthew Stafford (18:56.206)
Yeah, yeah, we.

Matthew Stafford (19:10.446)
Yeah. So we see people putting in all kinds of upsells in their cart and most of them don't have good data to track it. So all they do is they see that the app says, Oh, your average order value went from 140 to 160. And they think, Oh, great. I have an extra $20 per client. What they don't realize is especially if the upsell is not super congruent and they can't just go, yes, I want that and add it. If they have to go,

that to leave the cart, go look at the product to see the details about it before they can add it, it actually lowers their conversion. So yes, their average order value goes up, but they have less customers. And so it's amazing how many very smart business owners don't actually realize and can't track.

the loss of additional customers, they just look at the average order value going up and think that they've automatically won and that's not true. So I would say that when you're offering upsells in the cart, it's extremely important that it's a no brainer. So if you're buying a device, a really good in cart upsell would be a case for that device. So it's

very easy, you know exactly what you're getting. You don't have to leave and go figure it out. Or if you're ordering a harness, adding a seatbelt, you know, to keep it, keep your dog in the car. That would be very congruent. If you're selling a dress and you're trying to pair a pair of shoes with it, that's a terrible upsell in the car. They have to leave and go look at the shoes and, and see six angles of them and da da da da. But you see it happen all the time.

And so they don't realize what they're actually doing is now they're introducing a new question. Oh, do I need shoes? Oh, do I have extra money for the shoes? Oh, am I going to wear the dress if I don't have the shoes, dah, dah, dah, a whole bunch of other stuff. And I always say that, you know, if they've got to that stage and they don't buy, you've either, you either have an unanswered question or they don't trust you.

Matthew Stafford (21:24.302)
And so those are the two things that we're looking at at that point. Are we making it Homer Simpson simple? When they're in the cart, we don't want to offer them a bunch of things. We literally just want them to become a customer because our product is good. Our customer service is good. We've got those two things dialed in. We want them to become a customer and we'll sell them again and again through good marketing and relationship rather than that first time customer them having to trust us for everything.

Kunle Campbell (21:54.026)
True. So good, good point. Good point there. The congruence, because I was going to ask why would customers, why don't they just ignore the op sale on, on the ads of cards and move on. But with your example on the shoes and clothes, it's a distraction. It could take them down a rabbit hole and just kill that conversion and, you know, just prevent them from going to checkout. So it's a good point there. So that congruence is, is really important. Now from a

From a mobile standpoint, what's the essence? There's a lot of space restrictions on a mobile interface, as you can imagine. It's narrow, straight down the line. Several hit maps have shown that people don't typically scroll down. Where should we focus? How do you use stack elements? What should we know in mobile experience?

Matthew Stafford (22:48.47)
Yeah. So by looking at the data, we are always very conscious of how much people do scroll about 60 % of them never do. Um, so we know that. And so that, that makes above the fold a lot more important. And then also we're very, um, cognizant to make sure that we don't have a false bottom. So, uh, we want them to know that there is more stuff farther down if they scroll. And so we're always looking at that experience, um, to make sure that, uh, they know.

there's more information below that will help them make a decision that's right for them. But for sure, above the fold is the most important. And so in our data gathering, we see, oh, when they scroll 75 % of the page, they convert really high. Well, we go look at that page, look at what's about three quarters of the way down and the information that's there that's helping them make a decision.

is important enough that we want that above the fold, or at least to test it, getting that information above the fold. We want the page to basically convert at the same rate all the way through. And then when they get to the end, automatically it will convert a little bit better just because the people that do that much reading and going through it, they're gathering the information that they need to make the decision. And we find that those people convert a little higher than average.

but the rest of the page should convert fairly consistently all the way across.

Kunle Campbell (24:22.954)
You know, when you mentioned the, the changes, this very simple changes and in checkout, which is, you know, enter your email to get your order confirmation, enter your, your, your, um, your, your, your cell phone number to get some shipping updates. Those are like copyrighting hacks, right? They're there. I wouldn't, I don't want to say that hacks, but they're, they're, they're based on psychology and it's copy. It's simple copy. It's what people are reading. It's words.

using words to get better conversions. At a PDP level, which is a product description page.

How could you repeat those sort of actions to amp up conversions? I'm not talking box standard name of product, but what terms do you use to pique their interest, to arouse their attention, and just get them motivated to add to carton and move proceed?

Matthew Stafford (25:25.134)
Yeah, so we found words matter more than anything. Those are the biggest conversion metrics. So on the product page, having your add to cart button say add to cart, not proceed to checkout or not by now converts much better.

Kunle Campbell (25:45.544)
Why?

Matthew Stafford (25:45.804)
because people don't want to click on stuff where they don't know where they're going. And they're, when they're on the product page and they click add to cart, they're not ready to buy. Now, um, if you watch thousands of videos of what people do when they're interacting with the site, um,

Kunle Campbell (25:49.16)
Okay.

Matthew Stafford (26:02.766)
I would say more than 50 % of them put several items in their cart. Then they go in their cart and they start looking at stuff and removing what they don't want and then finish their purchase that way. And so by now is too soon. So entering the conversation at the point of where you're at on the page, just like in the cart, then it says proceed to checkout. It doesn't say by now cause you're not buying yet. You're proceeding to checkout. Then you're going to move to shipping.

then you're going to add your payment and then you buy. And so by, uh, stepping down those micro commitments with words, um, makes a huge difference. Uh, the other thing that we do, um, and now, I mean, we've done it so long and taught it so long that you actually see new themes coming out with that, but the unique value propositions underneath the add to cart. So, um, you know, 10 years ago, eight years ago, everybody put like,

payment icons. Well, everybody knows that you accept credit cards and stuff like that. And so putting those actually hurts because it makes it look old and antiquated and it seems spammy like the drop shippers. And so underneath of there, based on your audience, we think that there's phrases that you can put there that are unique value propositions to you. Like how fast do you ship it?

What's the language that your customer uses? How fast is it going to leave? Just a whole bunch of different things, which are questions that are in their mind when they need to make a decision if they want to buy something.

Kunle Campbell (27:46.794)
We ran a test on a PDP and we, the small change we made was item ships XD, you know, ships tomorrow. Yeah. And that gave an uplift of 20 % to our decat. So it's really, really good. Yeah. Words matter as you said.

Matthew Stafford (28:00.046)
Yeah, ships within 24 hours. We've done that and it matters a lot.

Matthew Stafford (28:07.982)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kunle Campbell (28:13.034)
What about reviews? What's your take on reviews? What about placements of customer reviews and also things like trust pilot? Is trust pilot any good?

Matthew Stafford (28:23.502)
Yep. Yep. That, um, and there's several of, uh, like stamped and, um, those that all mimic, uh, the reviews that Yoppo did basically, um, and there's a very good point. So you should push all of your reviews, um, with a response. So even the negative reviews are less than five star. Um, and why I say that is,

the testing reveals that the most clicked on reviews are two stars and they are the highest converting of anything on your site. And the reason for that is people do not expect you to be perfect, but they do expect you to take care of the issues. And so they want to know when there's an issue, how is it handled? And so if you're willing to push the lower reviews and how you handle them,

people actually trust you way more than if you just push your good reviews. If they, if you've, you know, helped thousands of customers and you have all five star reviews, they know that you're lying and you're hiding stuff. So automatically anything that you say has less truth to it. And so, but if you're willing to say, Hey, here's where we messed up, but we took care of it. They actually feel very, very good about that and convert much higher than your store average.

Kunle Campbell (29:50.954)
reminds me of Amazon, you know, if you've replied to like an Amazon review, explaining the situation is a lot more context, you know, and they see you're helpful. So they know you care. And it starts to play in to your advantage. So speaking of like credibility, what about social selling? So there's there's a huge buzz outside of websites, as you know, and social media, tick tock, Instagram.

Matthew Stafford (30:00.654)
Yeah.

Kunle Campbell (30:20.074)
with creators and influencers selling and with great success. So as selling channels, are you seeing any trends of bringing creator content, particularly short form video to product pages to further reinforce credibility or is that just a nice to have?

Matthew Stafford (30:43.274)
No, we've used it. Yeah, it's worked very well. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there. We've used it in the product thumbnails, you know, the image thumbnails. You can put...

Kunle Campbell (30:49.32)
No, no.

Matthew Stafford (30:57.426)
videos in there. And so the videos of a testimony or someone using it, those have converted really well for us. The same as like when a customer does almost like a, it's not really an unboxing, but they're excited about it. And they kind of show how they received it. Those work really, really well too. So the more transparent that you are, and then obviously like we were just talking about, you pair that with you giving the honest review.

that you've got it matters a lot and and it can make a substantial difference in the amount of add to carts that happen off that products page with those two elements done right so

you get your product images matter. That's really, uh, we've, uh, had huge conversion boosts by changing product images, making sure that you don't just put in eight thumbnails and six of them add no value. So we say, don't add a thumbnail unless it actually adds value different than the other ones. So, uh, typically four or five is like the max that you would do, uh, depending on what it is, you know, picture of the product, a lifestyle,

style shot, a comparison next to something so they can see the actual size, especially important for supplements. Like if you have a very small bottle, but they can't tell that then when they get the bottle, they automatically feel gypped if it's small. But if you show it like in relation to someone's hand or a few other things like that, we noticed that makes a huge difference. Um, and then, uh,

Kunle Campbell (32:27.594)
Mm -hmm.

Matthew Stafford (32:36.366)
I would say also like an infographic work really good and then that video. So those are the thumbnails that we always look to have.

Kunle Campbell (32:43.146)
Okay, okay. Makes sense. Makes sense. Just trying to think about any other elements on on a on a PDP on a product page. Yeah, third party endorsement. Do they are they nice to have or?

Matthew Stafford (33:01.038)
Yeah, that's why we definitely think always test like a really good review that you could put up above the product title or right where all your review stars are. And so, yes, that does. And that's social proof from someone besides you, which definitely carries more weight. You can say you're the best in the world and they're not going to believe you near as much as if your customer says you're the best in the world.

Kunle Campbell (33:30.41)
What about placements on reviews? So we know that like the review summary, like number of reviews should be top of fold. But what about the home or the placement, particularly mobile of the actual reviews, you know, shoppers read, where would you place it?

Matthew Stafford (33:38.528)
Yep.

Matthew Stafford (33:46.836)
Yeah, definitely down below. So that when you, um, we make that review, um, clickable up top so that it automatically takes you down to the reviews. And, um, again, like you said on Amazon, where people can ask their questions and get answers, um, all of that should be included and helped conversions. So you want your, um, your reviews to actually be like a live growing thing based off of people asking questions, you're responding to it. Um,

that type of review system certainly helps conversions a lot.

Kunle Campbell (34:22.058)
Okay, makes sense. So thinking about images, like the visuals of a site, what have your test or what's your take on humans actually having humans, what's the ratio of humans to product? And on the page? Is there any science to to having, you know, more more people in the visuals versus? Okay.

Matthew Stafford (34:48.174)
Um, not that, not that I'm aware of, I think maybe with certain products that might be, um, but as a general rule of thumb, no, we think that, uh, a product shot, the product by itself, um, a product in a lifestyle shot. So like, again, so you can see the size of it, um, get some sort of relation to it. Um, infographic that, you know, breaks down, you know, the unique value of the product and then, um,

either like a price comparison or a product comparison showing the features and benefits of yours compared to others. And again, another thing that we've tested extensively is that that product comparison chart doesn't have all green on you and all red on the others. Cause then again, they just totally negate it. So make it a true product comparison chart. If you beat them,

on three or four categories, that's fine. And it's fine if you lose on one or two. Hopefully you're losing on one or two that are a little more or less significant. Like, you know, maybe your ship time is typically an extra day or two. That could be on there. And you could say, you know, you're going to get this other one a little quicker, but you know, the reason why ours takes a little longer is because of XYZ. And so,

Damaging admissions can be very calculated and also be very, very effective to help conversions.

Kunle Campbell (36:21.513)
makes sense, makes sense. I want to wrap up with with the homepage. What is one thing your homepage should communicate?

Matthew Stafford (36:31.425)
Yeah, so it's very specific. What is your unique value? Why should they do business with you? So if they've landed on your homepage, what about you is the reason why they should buy from you and not some other competitor? And then the second thing that it needs is very easy navigation to what we would call your money making links. So most people have

have the menu. They try to offer everything that they they can sell. And it's very confusing and it lowers conversions. So if you're every store has a couple of products that make 80 % of their sales, those should be the navigation links. The rest could be found on the filter pages.

Category pages, etc. Do not use these big mega menus that create 80 choices before they even get pared down before they get to the filter page.

Kunle Campbell (37:40.042)
Yeah. And you know, all of this is nuanced because, you know, um, the experience for like a single product websites will be different to a website, a fashion website that has, you know, thousands or maybe hundreds of screws. So it's, it's nuanced, but put this on first principles there to be had for sure. For sure. For sure. Okay. Yeah. Matthew, it's, it's, it's been, it's been incredible. I've learned a thing or two from, from this.

convo for people who want to find out. And for that, I'm actually really grateful. I'm actually really grateful. What's your take on artificial intelligence? I've been asking this question very, very often. How has it changed the CRO process?

Matthew Stafford (38:29.774)
Um, we're, we're testing it a bunch of different ways. Um, we're actually in the process right now. We created a GPT that's a data scientist and we're letting it go through the GA for data and it can find a lot more stuff than the regular human can, cause it can look at it, um, thousands of different ways and it doesn't make mistakes. So that's, uh, one use case, uh, that we're doing right now.

Um, we've also created one that will actually do like an audit of the site. Um, that, uh, it took us about two or three weeks of refining it to get it really, really good. And so, yeah, there's, um, certainly ways I don't think it's replacing jobs. I think what it's doing is it's creating super employees and so, um, them having tools that make them better at their job.

And then able to check, uh, is probably where I think the first phase is. Um, and so people really don't need to be as afraid of it as I think they are. And I think that fear keeps them from using it. Um, and they're afraid like, Oh, if I use that, then they're going to replace me. Um, I think more true is if you use it, you become more valuable to the owner. And, um, uh, when, when jobs are,

on the line, you're probably gonna be the one that gets to stay, because you provide more value than the people that don't use it.

Kunle Campbell (40:04.202)
That's a really good point. That's a really good one. I didn't realize, um, chat .jpt could, could, could actually analyze a website. I know you can build a website. Super, super interesting. Okay. Um, good stuff, good stuff. Interesting, interesting. And some merchants are on installing, um, Google analytics. What's your take on, on that? And the reason why is due to.

Matthew Stafford (40:30.862)
Um.

Kunle Campbell (40:33.546)
just performance, so they want better site speed. They think it's bloated. And from, yeah, what are your thoughts on that?

Matthew Stafford (40:43.31)
Yeah, so we use Tag Manager for everything. And so you can remove scripts from the site, put them up in Tag Manager, and then it only fires on the page that's opening. There's a lot of different uses for it, and it prevents you from having to guess.

So the more detailed that data is, the better. And all Tag Manager is, or all Google Analytics is, is basically a hub for the data. What the Tag Manager does is it filters it on its way in, so then you can sort it and look at it a whole bunch of different ways. So if you don't use the Tag Manager to filter it and sort it, you basically have a whole bunch of data inside of Google Analytics, but you can't dissect it different ways.

ways in order to make very powerful assumptions about what the data is telling you.

Kunle Campbell (41:41.162)
Interesting. Very interesting. Okay, Matt, I'm going to have to, yeah, all good things come to an end, but it's been really, really interesting having you on the show. For people who want to find out more about you, your website is buildgrowscale .com. That's B -U -I -L -G -D -G -R -O -W -S -C -A -L -E .com. I will link to it in the show notes. Are you active on social media?

Matthew Stafford (42:11.246)
Yeah, yep. And you can also just email me at matt at buildgrowscale .com if you have a question or interested.

Kunle Campbell (42:18.954)
We do, we do, we do. Are you active on any social media platforms?

Kunle Campbell (42:27.402)
Are you active on any social media platforms?

Matthew Stafford (42:32.222)
Yeah, yeah, we're definitely on Facebook, LinkedIn. Those are the two main ones. I think we're on Instagram too, but not a lot.

Kunle Campbell (42:38.474)
Okay. I will link to your socials. Matt, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the 2X Ecommerce Podcast show. Thank you for sharing your tips on conversion rate optimization and scaling the ecommerce businesses.

Matthew Stafford (42:54.542)
Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.