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Understanding Conversion Rate Optimisation – a conversation with Matt Stafford
0 Playsin 8 hours
How to build, grow, and scale a web shop by converting more visitors into customers.
Matt Stafford is the founder of Build Grow Scale, a company that helps entrepreneurs to create web shops like Anso Belts that people want to buy from.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds Matt and host Michael Millward explore how anyone can establish a web shop that converts more visitors in to customers.
During their conversation Matt and Michael discuss how to:
- Convert the 97percent of visitors who do not buy into customers
- Build trust and credibility with potential customers
- Nurture value adding relationships with visitors that result in bigger sales
- Provide exceptional customer service
More information about Matt Stafford and Michael Millward is available at abeceder.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The Independent Minds' Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. Hello and welcome to The Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysseedah and people who think outside the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:22
Speaker
I'm your host, Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abysseedah.
Guest Introduction: Matthew Stafford
00:00:27
Speaker
In this episode of The Independent Minds, I am learning about conversion rate optimization from Matthew Stafford, who works for Build, Grow, Scale.
00:00:38
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr, because Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast production and distribution process so easy.
Podcast Production with Zencastr
00:00:54
Speaker
Regardless of whether you are an experienced podcaster or just starting out, I recommend that you use the link in the description to visit zencastr.com and take advantage of the built-in discount.
00:01:07
Speaker
Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencast is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:18
Speaker
And probably good enough to share with your friends, family and work colleagues as well. As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we will not be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Matthew Stafford's Entrepreneurial Journey
00:01:33
Speaker
to- Today's independent mind is Matt Stafford, the founder of Build, Grow, Scale. Matt is based in Florida in the United States, one of those states that I have visited. If I get the opportunity to return, I will be sure to make my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because as a member of the Ultimate Travel Club, I have access to trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays and all sorts of other travel related purchases.
00:02:01
Speaker
I have added a link with a built-in discount on membership fees to the description so that you can become a member of the Ultimate Travel Club as well and travel like me at trade prices.
00:02:13
Speaker
Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds. Hello, Matt. Hello. are you doing today, Michael? I'm very well, thank you very much, and I hope that you can say the same.
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah, I'm looking forward to the conversation. So am i Thank you very much, because I have a web shop called Workplace Learning Centre and I am going to be listening attentively so that I can apply all these lessons to the web shop.
00:02:39
Speaker
But please could we start by you telling us a little bit about how you ended up doing what you're doing today. What's the history of of Matthew Stafford? Yeah, so it's a little out of the ordinary. i actually owned my own commercial concrete business for 23 years.
00:02:56
Speaker
I lived in Michigan, so it was a seasonal business. There's only so much concrete you can pour when it's cold out. So I started looking at how to make some online money during the wintertime because I went to a Tony Robbins event. He was selling a program called Money Masters on how to make money online once a month.
00:03:16
Speaker
Up until that point, I had never used my computer to do anything other than send emails and proposals and quotes for big commercial jobs. I was on the road about 200 days a year pouring those concrete jobs. And I wanted to learn how to maybe be able to be home more often.
00:03:36
Speaker
So i got I got into online selling and my first crack at it was SEO and I didn't really like that. So about six months in, I decided to pivot and i found a site where we could design T-shirts and then run Facebook ad campaigns to them.
00:03:56
Speaker
And then this company would actually print, fulfill, and ship the orders. ah That worked very good for me to kind of kind of learn learn the ropes.
00:04:07
Speaker
I would say six or seven campaigns in, I finally got one that hit really well. Made a little over 10, 15 grand and thought like, oh, wow, this is... ah This is actual real money ah that could make a difference and ended up over the next three and a half years selling about $15 million dollars worth the t-shirts. Sold my concrete business, sold the two salons that I had and was 100% online about three years after that Tony Robbins event. Nice.
00:04:38
Speaker
So a complete conversion from hairdressing and concrete, that which is an unusual combination as well, into ah completely online. Yeah, I own Bricks to Clicks and the tagline is from brick and mortar to click and order.
00:04:55
Speaker
Nice. So conversion rate optimization, what does it actually
Understanding Conversion Rate Optimization
00:05:01
Speaker
mean? Yeah. So, um, the average website converts, uh, in e-commerce about two to 3%.
00:05:09
Speaker
And what that means is for every hundred people that you send to your site or that land on your site, about two to three, make a sale. Most people. think that traffic is the problem. And so they're like, oh, I need more traffic. I need better traffic. That's their whole focus. And for me, i ran traffic when I was selling those t-shirts.
00:05:32
Speaker
And what I realized was in order to make a lot of money is to get more of that traffic to convert. So I set out on a mission to figure out how do I get the 97 people that came to my website that didn't buy to buy so that I get five or six people out of a hundred to buy when my competitors are getting two or three. And so I really thought about it from the way that Dan Kennedy, the old marketing legend used to say is he who can afford to spend the most to acquire the customer will win.
00:06:10
Speaker
And if I can make six sales for every hundred people, and my competitors can only make three, I can, I can actually go in and and start dominating that market. And so for me, it's always been, how do I make the website work better so that I get more sales for the same amount of traffic? It sounds like most people with a, an online business, an online shop would be thinking I need quantity of traffic, people visiting the site. I need to get that number as much as possible.
00:06:44
Speaker
Whereas what you're saying, I suppose, is need people landing on the site who are more likely to buy. or how do we how do we make the site clearer, cleaner, so that they don't have to do as much thinking? They land there and they go, oh, okay, these people, i trust them.
00:07:02
Speaker
i know that this is what I was looking for. ah that type of information. and then then from there, once you're once you're converting people, four five six people out of a hundred, you can buy more traffic and then you can test a lot more things and you
Optimizing the Checkout Process
00:07:21
Speaker
have the budget to do it. It's just, you have to work on the profitability of the business first, which is to get as many people to convert as possible.
00:07:29
Speaker
Right. So when you say work on the profitability of the business to begin with, let's explore that. Well, if you have two or three sales per 100, your average order value to have $200 $300 in ah hundred bucks you're goingnna have two to three hundred dollars in top line revenue, you typically have about 50% of that is is burned up in the cost of goods and admin.
00:07:57
Speaker
So now you're down to $150 and then you got to buy traffic with that. So if I can get that number even 30% better, Now, all a sudden you can you can start turning things up. And the way that I would do that is the very first thing that we do is we try to optimize the checkout process so that the people that are getting to the checkout convert at a higher percentage that gives you more money in the bank right off the bat. And it also gives you more time to go ahead and work on the site. So we really start at the checkout, then go to the cart, then we go to the product page.
00:08:38
Speaker
Then we go to your filters. Then we go to the homepage. And what we found is a lot of owners, they start on the homepage. Well, when they make that better, all that does is get more people to go to the filter. It doesn't necessarily get them more money. So by starting backwards and moving towards the front of the optimization funnel, we're actually getting more money at every step.
00:09:01
Speaker
I can see that. You know, fancy webpage is a homepage. is not the page that you sell on. Exactly. The page that you sell on is the page where people are actually giving you information, which means that money transfers from them to you. Yeah.
00:09:16
Speaker
That needs to be as straightforward as possible. So only focus on getting the information that you need. I suppose, it yeah, only focus on the information that you need in order to get money rather than all sorts of questions that you could ask them. Yeah, and then leverage the psychological triggers that make it easier for them to make that decision because people buy emotionally and then justify it with logic.
00:09:42
Speaker
That's an interesting thing to say, that people buy emotionally and then justify it with logic. So I sup suppose in some ways, people have made the buying decision before they actually give the details. And buying emotionally means that on your web shop, you would have information, like you say, that demonstrates that the per of website that they're looking at is trustworthy, has the right sort of information to build credibility, and all those
Insights from Buyer Feedback
00:10:13
Speaker
sorts things. So when people get to the checkout, it's the logical kick in.
00:10:19
Speaker
Am I right? yeah Am I right? Yes, exactly. So user-generated content, testimonials, things like that, um Another thing that we do that anybody that listens to this can do is on their website, after someone takes the action that they want, so if if it's to make a sale or to opt in, ah the website always serves a thank you page.
00:10:44
Speaker
On that thank you page, you can have a question that pops up that says, what was the one thing that almost made you not buy? And those people that just gave you money will tell you, exactly what they didn't understand, what was difficult, what they would like to see different.
00:11:03
Speaker
And to be honest, ah probably six out of 10 of our biggest wins over the last several years came from that question, asking someone who had just given the website money, what was the one thing that almost prevented them from buying?
00:11:19
Speaker
It's a question that I had not thought to ask, but I can see the logic of asking it I can see the logic. that gives you the the information then to to obviously take away the thing that was frustrating someone and almost prevented them. Yeah. Yep. And when you go back and do that, you're going to make more sales. hundred percent. We've got to be, if you're going to run an online shop, you've got to be prepared to hear the feedback from your customers and also the people who decided not to become customers.
00:11:50
Speaker
So is it possible before someone leaves your website to have something that comes up and says, You know, you're about to leave us. Are you sure? Yeah, there is. There's pop ups and we do do that. It's called they they are triggered by an exit abandon. So if someone scrolls up to close the tab, it will pop up.
00:12:11
Speaker
a thing that says, wait, um, let us give you ah a discount that you can use when you come back. Or if you stay, you know, it depends on the different messages, but typically those will get about, um, 15 to 20% of the people that are leaving. And then you'll convert about 25% of those people
Nurturing Long-term Buyer Relationships
00:12:33
Speaker
over time. So you you actually end up getting, a fair amount of sales by,
00:12:39
Speaker
capturing people when they're getting ready to leave early. Just because you've you've told people that you know what they're about to do and you'd rather that they didn't. Yeah. Yep. Just giving them, um you know, an opportunity to save a little bit of money or to at least get on your email list so that you can build build a relationship with them and nurture them into buying over time. This is about nurturing the relationship as much as it is about the process that they go through.
00:13:06
Speaker
Um, yeah, I actually think that's the most important part. ah You don't necessarily want to just be like, buy, buy, buy, sale, sale, sale, here's a discount, but actually provide value so that you stick out.
00:13:22
Speaker
Because most people are very lazy business owners, and they don't do a good job with nurturing that they just all they care about is the sale right now.
00:13:32
Speaker
And the truth of the matter is, People will only only about 30% of your audience is ready to buy right now. The other 70% that's going to buy will typically happen over a 30 to 90 day period.
00:13:47
Speaker
And the issue is most business owners are trying to create their business from the people that buy now, not the other 70% that will buy over the next 30 to 90 days. And so the business owners that actually work on nurturing and creating a relationship capture the lion's share of those people that aren't ready to buy right now because they're the ones that stay in touch with the people, provide value. And then when they're ready to buy, the person that has created that value is top of mind.
00:14:20
Speaker
Yeah. Those people that buy sort of within 30 to 90 days rather than instantly, do they spend more money than the person who buys instantly? Yes, typically, yes. Yeah.
00:14:32
Speaker
So that's because the relationship has been developed and value beyond the actual purchase has been provided with might be how-to guides or something that has helped make that person's life a little bit easier.
00:14:47
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So the building of the relationship is as important as the the strength of the of the closing relationship. Yeah, people want still want to buy from people that they know, like, and trust.
00:15:00
Speaker
And if the only thing that they've ever seen from you is, hey, I'm discounting my product, hey, I'm discounting my product, or hey, this sale is ending, ah that's not really a relationship.
00:15:12
Speaker
The people that have provided value and take the time to nurture that are going to be way farther ahead. Yes, I get emails every day from shops that I once purchased something from, but it's always an email about this this price has been dropped and we have a sale on And you do end up feeling as if, what is the real price of this product? Because it constantly seems to be buy two, get one free.
00:15:43
Speaker
There's always some sort of offer on all of the time. he just gets very confusing. And the strange thing is you start to lose trust. Maybe it's not strange, but constant offers, constant discounts, constant sales, you start to lose trust in the shop because you don't know what the real price is.
00:16:02
Speaker
Well, the other thing is you have no relationship with them. ah They see you as ah as a dollar sign and unconsciously you know that if they've never built any value but they're still asking for money and asking for money yeah with zero relationship, you're feeling used as a consumer. You're not feeling valued.
Importance of Product Quality and Customer Service
00:16:22
Speaker
Yes.
00:16:23
Speaker
Let's assume for a moment that you know someone is in that sort of situation that you were in and they're thinking, ye I could make some money online. need to set up her a web shop selling something. What would be the process that you would advise them to go through?
00:16:38
Speaker
The very first one would be to use Shopify. They're definitely the 800 pound gorilla. They've made it very easy. ah They created an app environment where people can build tools ah to address almost any situation that people need for online selling. And a lot of it is handled in such a way that very minimal developer work.
00:17:01
Speaker
So, you know, a lot of people can can make a decent living before they actually ah really need to start building a team. And now with AI, it's, it's getting even easier. So I would say first thing i would be playing with one of the paid AI tools every single day. Uh, second, get a shop.
00:17:22
Speaker
And then from there, obviously a good product, good quality product so that, uh, when you sell something to somebody, they're not unhappy, uh, we'll make it much easier because then they'll tell other people about you, ah and you know,
00:17:38
Speaker
I've been doing this now about 12 years where we're helping other people. And it's amazing how many people have just sold really, really terrible products. And they made a bunch of money in the beginning, but then they realized there was no long-term business to that because the people would never come back and buy from them again. And that's the most expensive customer. This is the first time buyer. So you really want to have a good product and take care of customer service.
00:18:06
Speaker
Like your mom is the consumer. And I say that to everybody because the one thing, you know, we deal with very large businesses now. Our minimum typically is someone that's doing a couple hundred thousand dollars a month in sales is the one constant that I see between all the brands that we work with is they take customer service very serious and they never skimp on it.
00:18:32
Speaker
They never make the customer wrong. They just handle it. And over time, they seem to be able to handle the cyclical nature of everything. You know, there's good times and there's bad times in every industry.
00:18:46
Speaker
And there is an online selling. It was great during COVID. And then there's, you know, recession and then there's inflation. Then it's good again. and And so there's always ups and downs. And the people that weather it the best are the ones that have a really good customer service.
00:19:02
Speaker
You've got to put the customer first, which is obviously what Jeff Bezos said would happen with Amazon, or put the customer first and make it easy for the customer. You can do the same thing on a much smaller scale. Yes. yeahp And I would venture to say that it's pretty necessary. Yeah.
00:19:18
Speaker
And in many ways, because you are smaller and it's your business, your shop, you can create a much more personalized experience, I suppose, as well. Exactly.
00:19:30
Speaker
Should people go straight from you know I want to make some money online into having a shop or is a good way to start to start off with affiliate selling, creating that content that builds trust and having the affiliate links that you go through to other sites. um I think they're both very viable business models. I've never really done very much of the affiliate, so I'm not experienced at it.
00:19:56
Speaker
we've We've really worked around people that build the shops and I built my own shops and that's what I know. okay I can say that for sure, if you learn how to create content and how to sell, it's going to help you a lot when you do have a shop.
00:20:13
Speaker
Yeah, I guess... the way that you positioned it, it makes a lot of sense. Um, I'm just not sure that it has to be done that way. Cause I've never done it that way. Okay.
00:20:24
Speaker
You can do it either way is what you're saying, because you've done it without the affiliate stage first. Yeah. And that's why you're building the shop, you're building your content but in order to demonstrate confidence, professionalism and expertise so that you can build the trust. Yeah. Right.
00:20:39
Speaker
So you're building the trust, building your shop, from the end towards the start. So you need a really straightforward, simple, easy to use checkout process to accepting as many different ways in which people might want to pay as possible, I suppose. Yeah. All of that's included in Shopify. So it really gives you soup to nuts, uh, open a shop, upload products, track your inventory.
00:21:08
Speaker
uh, you know, offers. Uh, you can even sell digital products on there and then it gives you a checkout that, uh, works with multiple payment methods and you can add different gateways and do all kinds of things. It doesn't need to be complicated. It's actually fairly simple. Yeah. And it's a one-stop shop type of solution. Yep. You're not going worry about credit card fees or anything like that. Well, the the credit card fees will still come out, but it'll be in your Shopify processing.
00:21:35
Speaker
Okay. Of the sites that you've worked on, the entrepreneurs that you've worked with, which one would be good example for people to look at as to the work that you do?
Success Story: Antonbelt.com
00:21:44
Speaker
Yeah, antonbelt.com. Antonbelt, A-N-S-O-N-B-E-L-T.com.
00:21:50
Speaker
They sell what I would consider to be the very best belt on the market. We've worked with them for eight or nine years. And they have amazing customer service.
00:22:01
Speaker
In fact, for the first six or seven years that we worked with them, David and his father still answered the phone for customer service.
00:22:11
Speaker
And so I know they still do, just not all the time, but. For the first six or seven years, they literally answered customer service phone calls. And that can make ah a hell of a difference, I suppose, that that people know that they're going through to the business, not to a a subcontracted call center.
00:22:30
Speaker
Yeah, and and it gives you real-time customer feedback on what the customer's experience is. And they've continued to optimize. And you know they have ah an amazing business.
00:22:42
Speaker
Amazing business. Right. What would you say is that the mistake that you see most shop owners making before they come to you, obviously? um I would say probably hiding behind their computer instead of calling their customers, instead of nurturing, creating that relationship. There's a lot involved in running a business. And so I think sometimes people's default is to not deal with the problems.
00:23:13
Speaker
But if you think about it, we all have a business because somebody has a problem. And so we're really solving problems for people. And if that's not okay for us, then maybe being self-employed isn't the right vehicle.
00:23:31
Speaker
Maybe working inside of a company where you handle a couple of different aspects of something instead of the customer service makes sense. But yeah, for me, i pretty much tell business owners,
00:23:46
Speaker
that's, that's what you're signing up for is to solve other people's problems. And it's going to be very difficult to do that if you don't like solving problems. That's a good way of looking at it. I meet a lot of people who are saying, Oh, I don't like selling.
00:24:00
Speaker
No, I don't like the closing of the the deal. I never know when to ask. I think, but if you are looking at it as I'm not selling something, but I am solving this person's problem, you then have to,
00:24:14
Speaker
Think about what do I need to do in order to convince the person that I have the knowledge, the expertise, the resources in the shop in order to solve that problem. about building confidence in your professionalism and your choices of products, which enables you to then say, yeah, I can solve your problem. Yeah, if if you believe what you do is good and it helps people,
00:24:39
Speaker
then I feel like you have an obligation to ah sell that. yes I don't think selling is bad. I think manipulation is bad. If you're selling someone someone that has a problem, you're selling them a solution that's good and you know that it will work, then I think you have that obligation. If you know that your solution isn't going to solve it, I also think you have the obligation to tell them it's not a good fit And this is where I think you should go look, not sell them something knowing that it's going to be a poor experience. Yes, I think that's very true. The other thing, though, that you are making me think is that although there are things like artificial intelligence, ai can do all sorts of different things and can I'm told AI can handle customer service, et cetera.
00:25:31
Speaker
What you're saying is that having a great website, a great web shop, with great processes and all the different elements included in there. One of things that really supports a great website is having real people who are involved in the business understand the products, talking about the products and dealing with the customer service inquiries and dealing with the relationship with the customers as human to human rather than computer to human. Yeah, there is certainly AI that works really good for small details, like where's my order and it will answer it. It will give them their shipping information.
00:26:13
Speaker
it will handle very easy tasks. And I think that that's great because one, the chat bot is never in a bad mood.
00:26:24
Speaker
It never had to stay up late with the baby. It doesn't get short with the customer. You can even program in what type of the nature of how you want it to speak, et cetera. And so that works very good to take off some of the lower level things that the business owner doesn't need to worry about. And it gives them more time to handle the issues that require the human touch.
00:26:53
Speaker
Yeah. The human touch with all of the technology, we still need the human touch, right? Thank you very much. It's been very interesting. i've I've really enjoyed it. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
00:27:05
Speaker
It's been pleasure. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Matt Stafford, from Build, Grow, Scale.
00:27:18
Speaker
You can find out more information about both of us by using the links in the description. If you have experienced technical challenges while listening to the independent minds, you will want to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data.
00:27:33
Speaker
So listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering. There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3.0 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code.
00:27:47
Speaker
I'm sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of The Independent Minds as much as Matt and I have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:27:59
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. You'll probably also want to share the link with your family, friends and work colleagues. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:28:16
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.