August 6, 2025 • 20 mins
Data is only as valuable as the insights you glean from it! AJ Davis breaks down the complexities of conversion analytics, sharing actionable tips to translate numbers into profit. This episode empowers aspiring entrepreneurs and established businesses alike to harness the true potential of their data, ensuring they make informed decisions that drive revenue growth and customer loyalty.
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Connect with Aj Davis:
Company Website: www.experimentzone.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/experimentzone/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ExperimentZoneCo/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/experimentzone/
Connect with Chris Troka:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-troka-3a093058/
Website: https://focused-biz.com/
Website: https://christroka.com/ #brainwork #framework #business #entrepreneur #conversion #analytics #data
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The first place you should goare the people who've actually
(00:02):
purchased your product.
So my favorite question to do is toask people, how would you describe this
product to a friend or to a family member,or whoever the relevant person would be?
So use your customers, engage withthem as a way to figure out the best
way to resonate with future customers.
You are listening to Brainwork Framework,a Business and Marketing podcast,
(00:23):
brought to you by Focused-biz.com.
Welcome back to another episode.
With us today is the founder andCEO of Experiment Zone, AJ Davis.
They're a conversion rateoptimization specialist as CEO
and founder of Experiment Zone.
They help online businesses growtheir sales by improving their
website and bringing data to life.
Aj, so excited to have you on.
(00:43):
How are you doing?
Doing great today.
Thanks for having me on.
Absolutely.
So we always like to ask aboutour entrepreneurial journey.
What were you doing before that broughtyou into what you're doing today?
I've been doing thisfor a little while now.
We just passed our eight yearmark, which is very exciting.
But before that I had been ina variety of consultancies and
agencies, but also in-house atsome big tech companies as well.
(01:04):
So my journey took me fromfinance and my early career to
really focused on UX research andin-house UX research at Google.
And then I worked at an agency fora little while and worked with some
really big brands and had a greattime doing it and thought, this is
something I can really do on my own ina better way and having a bigger impact.
(01:26):
Wow, that is very cool.
So now tell me more about the workthat you specialize and focus on
right now with conversion rateoptimization 'cause when a lot of
us think mark marketing advertising,they think top of funnel more ads.
Why is the conversion rateoptimization so important?
Yeah, we're like the perfect pairingfor anyone spending money on ads or
SEO basically, you get people to yourwebsite and then our job is to get those
(01:47):
visitors to your site to become customers.
So we do a variety of thingsfocused on the user experience
of that piece of the journey.
What is it like for someone toencounter the brand for the first
time in a more direct way with allthe pieces and complexity that now
your website is presenting to them?
So it's no longer this kind ofsnippy message on an ad where
(02:08):
it captures our attention.
Now we have to tell the story.
We need to give theeducation and the persuasion.
All those elements have to cometogether to end up closing the deal.
So if you picture someone at a physicalstore, all the ads and stuff, get them
into the target or whatever store you'retalking about and then our job is to
design the inside of the store so thatpeople can find what they're looking for
(02:30):
and understand where to go to check outand how all those pieces come together.
I love that.
And that part of that user experiencefrom actually being on the website,
interacting, taking them throughthe stages of the buyer's journey.
It's a little complex 'cause you'retrying to balance, I need the website
to load fast enough where they're stillinterested with copy that gets to the
point but still needs to create thisstorytelling element and education piece.
(02:52):
And then the persuasion.
So you're trying to fitall these elements in.
How do we find this balancebetween too short, too long?
Are there kind of like tried andtrue practices that you recommend.
The answer is you have to test itbecause it really is context dependent.
So we find that there aresome best practices and
we'll talk about those today.
So I don't want anyone to walkaway thinking she's just gonna be
a consultant and say, it depends.
(03:13):
But my headline is, it reallydoes matter who your audience is.
It does matter what your product is.
So if you have a really simpleproduct and you have one product,
it's a very different journey.
If you sell 500 products and they'recustomizable and very complex and
similarly, if it's like a reallyniche problem that immediately people
can understand how you solve it.
(03:33):
Perfect.
But if you have to help themfigure out where to go and what's
right for them, there's a lot ofhandholding that goes through that.
So it all depends.
But at the end of the day, the firststarting place everyone needs to do
and most websites have wrong, is thatany page somebody lands on, whether
it's a homepage, which is kind of whatwe normally think of as the starting
place but sometimes it's product pages,sometimes it's a dedicated landing page.
(03:57):
Any place someone might startneeds to be able to answer three
questions right off the bat.
What it is that this site is selling,who it's selling it to and why that
person should buy that product.
Particularly from this business.
That's a lot to answer in a small amountof space and we need to really get that
answer right in order to sell effectively.
(04:17):
But first and foremost, mostcompanies aren't even putting that
information on those key pages.
That is very helpful information.
When it comes to kinda tryto true practices, what about
the trends and the changes?
Have there been any trends or changesthat you've seen in the last five
to 10 years or when it comes to CRO?
That's a great question.
I think there are lots ofpieces that are always changing.
(04:38):
There are things that have beentrendy, that have turned out to not
really be a great idea for conversion.
And then there are things thatpeople were a little afraid of
maybe impacting conversion thatturned out to actually not matter.
So the one that comes to mind for meis a lot of the templates you'll find
on Shopify or BigCommerce or theseplatforms say, Hey, put this scrolling
banner as your homepage banner.
(04:58):
The first thing people seeare these sort of things that
automatically scroll through.
Great.
I can put like five to six differentmarketing messages and people
can click on what interests them.
That sounds good in principlebut it turns out people engage
even less with that whole banner.
Any one of them.
They click on them less, theybounced at a higher rate if they're
seeing a lot of those things.
(05:19):
And so we're often just testing,can we get it right with one?
Can we get to one brand message andthen maybe intersperse some of those
influential pieces and marketingmessages elsewhere on the site.
But that's kind of an examplethat's very common practice.
It's been trendy to have thator to do these video overlays.
And at the end of the day areactually distracting people from
the main reason they're there.
(05:40):
Absolutely.
And I think that just highlights theimportance of testing things out.
Something you may think would be a greatidea ends up failing and then something
that you didn't think would have aneffect actually ends up working better.
So it's something you haveto attest an experiment.
Is there a certain length of timethat you usually recommend a test
or an experiment to say, Hey, we'refeeling confident in this decision, we
should test something different now.
Yeah.
(06:00):
We use three criteria fordeciding if something has
gotten what we need out of it.
We always let test run for at leasttwo weeks because someone shopping on
the weekend might have different intentthan someone on a Wednesday morning.
And we like to see that full cycle twice.
A lot of companies wanna test in a day ortwo and that's gonna bias your results.
You don't know how that's gonna hold up.
We also look for a minimum sample sizethat we determine ahead of time, so
(06:23):
we don't let our own biases creep inlike, oh, it looks like it's winning
but we didn't actually get enough data.
And then we also look for statisticalsignificance that this result is actually
gonna be different than this one.
And in most likelihood andthe highest likelihood.
So those are kind of the threethings that we're looking for and
the combination of three things giveus confidence to turn off a test.
(06:43):
The TLDR, make sure you let it run forat least two weeks and make sure that
you have a significant sample size.
Yeah, I was kind of curious, as faras the things can be seasonal or
yearly but even that shorter cycle ofthe two weeks, I feel like is a good
timeframe 'cause again, you get theWednesday morning, the Saturday kind
of gives you that bigger picture lookbut speaking about data as a whole,
we can learn a lot from our data butsome people, I just don't feel like
(07:06):
they don't know how to utilize it orthey don't know how to interpret it.
So what's your approachto making sense of data?
What data do you use?
What's just fluff data?
What do you focus on?
I find that there's twoextremes of people that show up.
I've met many people who just close thedoor on the data, know it's there but
don't really know what to do with it.
So don't really look at it.
And then the other side, I know peoplewho will have their Google Analytics
(07:27):
live streaming, how many people areon their site right now, how many
people are ordering and really reactiveto what's happening in this moment.
And I try to sit in the middleof that as a UX researcher.
My passion and my training has ledme to start with a question first.
So before I even look at the data,I'm trying to figure out what it
is that I need to learn about.
And in order to know what the questionshould be, I should know what the goal is.
(07:49):
So if the goal is, hey, we shouldfigure out how do we get more
people to convert on mobile devices?
Something I might wonderabout is, where are people on
mobile devices getting stuck?
Okay, that gives me some cleardata points of what to look for.
Where are they coming in, what pages,what's the conversion rate from this
page to this page for this group?
And then what's the overallconversion to order?
(08:10):
So that gives me a really clear focus.
I can predefine the five to 10data points I might need to examine
and to go answer that question.
I think the risk that we have is if wejust look at this big sea of data and
hope that something interesting popsout to us and take action on it that can
end up being pretty distracting or maybetaking us away from our primary goal.
Absolutely.
And I think the data speaks foritself, but there's other things
(08:32):
that can't be spoken through data.
Like, the user experience or thefeeling or the thoughts that they
have about a company or even thosesticking points that you mentioned.
Sometimes called friction within thebuyer's journey where they get stuck or
they hit an obstacle, either the form istoo long or the button isn't working right
or just take 'em through this process thatthey didn't expect and they get stuck.
They lose confidence.
What are some ways that you'retrying to reduce the friction
(08:54):
within the buyer's journey?
We're creating these hypotheses of thingsthat might do better than something else
based on what problems we think there are.
And sometimes we get stuck and wedon't really know what's driving
the data that we're seeing andwe're not getting traction on these
changes we think should be working.
And that's where that qualitativedata can be really helpful.
So to your point, sometimes weactually need to figure out how
to get into our customer's heads.
(09:16):
And the best way to do it'sactually to talk to them.
So we do a lot of qualitative research.
There's some really good methods for thatwhere you can observe people, have them
think aloud about what they're seeingand observing and where they get stuck.
If you get a handful of people todo that, you can start to see themes
that come out that then you canaddress in a follow-up response.
But we also do interviewsand other things.
(09:37):
So it really all depends.
It all comes down to what is thegoal that we're trying to accomplish?
What's the problem and whatis kind of the solution or the
hypothesis we need to explore?
So at the end of the day.
You've gotta all bring it back toyour business goals and not get
distracted by, oh, this one customersaid this one thing, let's go fix that.
So taking that step back, bringing in thedata that matters and setting aside the
(09:57):
data that isn't as important right nowbut knowing it's available in the future.
Absolutely.
When you mentioned that just remindedme of some of the small business
owners who will post like their worstreview where it's like the worst
grilled cheese sandwich I've ever had.
And they'll post thatpublicly or just as a display.
Like, Hey, you know what?
This is the worst grilled cheese sandwich.
Come on in and try it.
Almost as if it's a badge of honor.
But these thoughts and feelings aboutyour brand and what people review you
(10:20):
about, that's our perception of yourbusiness and that experience that you
have through them is gonna impact.
Yeah.
That made me think of this very commonthing that we do, I think anyone listening
to this podcast could do themselves.
What do I put on my websiteas my brand message?
The first place you shouldgo are the people who have
actually purchased your product.
So my favorite question to do is toask people, how would you describe this
(10:43):
product to a friend or to a family memberor whoever the relevant person would be?
And if you get enough of thoseanswers back, you're gonna get a much
better piece of copy to put on yourwebsite than as the team who's really
close to this product, who's reallypassionate about what it's gonna solve.
The words that you choose aren't gonnabe the same as your customer who's
gonna really boil it down to the basics.
(11:03):
So use your customers, engage withthem as a way to figure out the best
way to resonate with future customers.
That is really smart.
I really like that.
'cause yes, what they explicitlysay will directly affect how people
perceive your business and your website.
We're just too close to ourproduct to make that clear
picture and representation.
I was gonna ask about the tools andwhen it comes to finding out about
(11:25):
the user experience and using thatto improve our conversion rates.
Things like AI, heat maps,tracking and cookies.
Are any of these tools helpful andrelevant to some of the work that you do?
And can you tell me more aboutthe tools that you're using?
Yeah, I would say yes to all of them.
I think tools kind of at thesame way I think of data where
(11:46):
there are lots of options.
We have to be really careful notto get distracted by them but if we
know what we're trying to accomplish,we can figure out where to go.
So, with the example we just talkedabout, maybe you ask a thousand
customers to describe your business.
Now you've got a huge set ofqualitative data and you could go
through and label them and try to sortthem out and that could be helpful.
(12:07):
But you could also shortcut that by askingAI to do it and seeing how close that gets
to kind of boiling it down to what are thethree to five things you're seeing there.
So I do think it's worth working withan expert to construct the questions
and the things that you're askingbut you can leverage technologies
that are out there to shortcut theanalysis or the synthesis of the data.
(12:27):
And similarly, some of the othertools out there, like the AB testing
tools and all these things, theycome together only if you know
what it is that you're tryingto accomplish with them.
So a lot of companies I workwith, I'll say, Hey, do you
have click tracking available?
A heat mapping tool?
And nine outta 10 are like, yeah, I'vehad that on there since the beginning.
And they were kind of proud 'cause ofcourse you have to have that on your site.
That's what every goode-commerce business does.
(12:49):
But I ask them what they've learnedfrom it or what they've done with it.
And I think that's often like, I'mnot really sure and that's kind
of the same thing where you canhave it, it's good to have it.
You can look back at data but unlessyou have a question that you're
trying to answer, it's hard toget value at a lot of these tools.
Absolutely.
It's one thing to get the informationbut do you act upon it and make
use of that data after the fact?
(13:10):
And have you ever found an instance where,maybe they just tried to jump on a piece
of data and change something for the sakeof changing it and it ended up hurting the
results that they thought would improve?
I just feel sometimes it's like we getinto early and feel like, I just need to
change this, when we should really justleave it alone and let things play out.
Yes.
(13:31):
Many times.
I think the most common scenario thatcomes to mind, that a lot of times
companies will say, our site's just old.
It looks bad, it's kindof clunky, it's slow.
Let's just throw it out and try againand sometimes if they take the time to
try again and compare the two of whatwas there versus what's the new thing?
The new thing actually is hurting them.
(13:51):
They're getting less revenue,their conversion rates down.
There's something going on that wefail to anticipate in rolling out this
new site that looks good, is faster.
Checks a lot of boxes and kindof slow that process down.
Our best case scenario is to rollout big changes but test them against
each other so that we can pull backand start again if that happens.
I have a client who I would shine alight on as making some really strong
(14:14):
choices in this way where they reallywanna move the way their graphics
and their illustrations are done.
They have a new brand style andthey also have some new layouts and
copy they wanna do and they've justdone a really good job at being
tenacious at testing those changes.
And if they don't work.
Okay, we'll try again.
And they come up with another thingthat fits the new brand guidelines
but will serve the customerbetter than what's there now.
(14:37):
Absolutely.
And I think that's a testament toputting something out there, testing
things a little bit and not beingafraid to go back and change things.
It's not like you have to perfectsomething over eight months or
eight years until you finallyget it absolutely perfect.
It'll never be perfect but I feelputting it out there, you learn
through that experience, throughtesting and then changing based on
that feedback, it's just invaluable.
(14:58):
And I think that some of our bestlearnings come from when something
doesn't work in the way that we expect.
And I think knowing ahead of time whatwe thought was gonna happen, having
a hypothesis of how this thing willoutperform this thing because of this,
well, if that doesn't hold up, we'velearned something really valuable about
the customer, about the site experience,about our own knowledge that's there.
Absolutely.
(15:18):
Now, for those interested in gettingconnected with you and learning more about
you online, where can people find you?
Our company site is experiment zone.com.
I'm also on LinkedIn, AJ Davis.
There's probably a hundred of us.
So Austin, Texas is our location.
You can reach out to mevia message on LinkedIn.
One of the offers I like to make toanyone listening to the podcast is
(15:39):
to hit me up for a virtual coffee.
At the beginning of my career, asI mentioned, I was in finance and
then I moved into UX and technologyand kind of moved around a bit.
And the reason I even made that changewas because I had a hundred coffees
with a hundred different people,and I want to just give that back.
So hit me up for a virtual coffeeor if you're in Austin, let me
know and we can meet in person.
(16:00):
That is wonderful, and we'll have thoselinks available down on the show notes
and the description for everybody.
Now, AJ would there be a resource either,podcasts, books, YouTube channels,
places where people can find out moreabout everything that you've learned or
specifically conversion rate optimization?
We have a podcast, it's calledthe Experiment Zone Podcast,
I'll make a plug for it.
You can come watch us on YouTube.
(16:21):
We do some screen share and somelive critiques of stores but
we also have an audio version.
So check us out theExperiment Zone podcast.
Very nice.
And then just wanted to askmore about an example of a
business that you worked with.
Where after coming in with yourspecial magic, the special sauce,
what were some of the results thatyou were able to get them from the
before and after with their business?
(16:43):
Yeah, we have one client in particularthat stands out because they were
really wanting to resonate with peoplewho would visit the landing page and
they had lots of information and wedid a research project with their sales
team and ended up increasing theirconversion rate on the page by 120%.
Just because we boiled it down to thekey things that mattered instead of
(17:03):
having lots of overwhelming information.
So that's one test but we have otherclients where we've been working with
them for years and we've helped reshapetheir business strategy and their
pricing and their design and styleso we can really become an integrated
part of the team and really helpgrow the business in the long term.
Absolutely, and I feel a lot of businessesare just leaving money on the table.
(17:24):
You're already paying for thevisitors to come to your site or
you created the content and it'sstarting to pick up traction.
Why wouldn't you want toget another sale from that?
It's a no brainer.
Yeah.
What would it look like to go froma 1% conversion rate to even 1.2%?
Right.
A lot of businesses haven't thoughtthrough the math on that but it can
have a huge ROI impact to not have toinvest additional right now in marketing.
(17:47):
Grow your business and thenyou can reinvest that and just
the whole thing will grow.
So pausing or waiting too long oninvesting on that piece of the puzzle
makes everyone's job harder on your team.
And we're great compliments to teams thatare focused on getting people to the site.
Absolutely.
Now with everything that you'redoing, what are you looking
forward to most in 2025?
Are you launching any new initiatives?
(18:08):
Anything exciting coming through?
Are you kind of sticking withthe same game plan that's been
working for you all these years?
I'm publishing my first book, soI'll give a little plug for that.
It's a broader topic than CRO, it'scalled Usability for the World.
And we're going planning to publishmultiple versions of it, tackling
different key problems in the world.
This first one is focused on buildingbetter cities and communities.
(18:30):
So I'll give another plug, which is checkus out on usability for the world.com.
Very exciting.
Aj I wanted to ask more about any othertopic or anything we haven't woven
into what we're talking about yet?
To make sure we highlight?
I think we've covered all thethings I was expecting too.
I think you had a question along theway around other episodes of yours
that I've listened to and impact.
(18:51):
So I do have an answer to that if youwant to wrap up with that question.
Absolutely.
So aj tell me more about some ofthe impacts other entrepreneurs
or lessons have had for you.
I was just listening to your podcast.
An episode you did recently was aroundthe use of improv in business and that
one in particular really resonatedwith me because I too have done a lot
(19:12):
of improv classes and my story's alittle different than the guest you
had but he's using it as a businessto teach people about communication.
But for me, I started using itjust in how comfortable I was.
I would not be doing podcasts todayif I didn't take improv classes.
Just taught me to think on my feet andbe scrappy and kind of embrace what ends
up coming out of my mouth as I'm talking.
(19:33):
So it was really cool to hear aboutsomeone who's really specialized in
that and I thought you guys had areally good conversation about that.
So if you've missed that episode,definitely go back and listen to it.
I appreciate and it was such agreat conversation at the end.
We even went through alittle exercise for wordplay
association, which is really cool.
Just thinking on your toes andusing those communication skills
for other real life applications,I think it's really impactful.
(19:55):
AJ, we appreciate you sharing yourtime and all the tips and tricks and
knowledge you've shared with us today.
Make sure you go check out thelinks available down the show notes
and the description and appreciateall that you've done for us.
Thank you aj.
Thanks so much for having me on.
It was a good conversation.
It was a pleasure.
Thank you.
The first place you should goare the people who've actually
(00:02):
purchased your product.
So my favorite question to do is toask people, how would you describe this
product to a friend or to a family member,or whoever the relevant person would be?
So use your customers, engage withthem as a way to figure out the best
way to resonate with future customers.
You are listening to Brainwork Framework,a Business and Marketing podcast,
(00:23):
brought to you by Focused-biz.com.
Welcome back to another episode.
With us today is the founder andCEO of Experiment Zone, AJ Davis.
They're a conversion rateoptimization specialist as CEO
and founder of Experiment Zone.
They help online businesses growtheir sales by improving their
website and bringing data to life.
Aj, so excited to have you on.
(00:43):
How are you doing?
Doing great today.
Thanks for having me on.
Absolutely.
So we always like to ask aboutour entrepreneurial journey.
What were you doing before that broughtyou into what you're doing today?
I've been doing thisfor a little while now.
We just passed our eight yearmark, which is very exciting.
But before that I had been ina variety of consultancies and
agencies, but also in-house atsome big tech companies as well.
(01:04):
So my journey took me fromfinance and my early career to
really focused on UX research andin-house UX research at Google.
And then I worked at an agency fora little while and worked with some
really big brands and had a greattime doing it and thought, this is
something I can really do on my own ina better way and having a bigger impact.
(01:26):
Wow, that is very cool.
So now tell me more about the workthat you specialize and focus on
right now with conversion rateoptimization 'cause when a lot of
us think mark marketing advertising,they think top of funnel more ads.
Why is the conversion rateoptimization so important?
Yeah, we're like the perfect pairingfor anyone spending money on ads or
SEO basically, you get people to yourwebsite and then our job is to get those
(01:47):
visitors to your site to become customers.
So we do a variety of thingsfocused on the user experience
of that piece of the journey.
What is it like for someone toencounter the brand for the first
time in a more direct way with allthe pieces and complexity that now
your website is presenting to them?
So it's no longer this kind ofsnippy message on an ad where
(02:08):
it captures our attention.
Now we have to tell the story.
We need to give theeducation and the persuasion.
All those elements have to cometogether to end up closing the deal.
So if you picture someone at a physicalstore, all the ads and stuff, get them
into the target or whatever store you'retalking about and then our job is to
design the inside of the store so thatpeople can find what they're looking for
(02:30):
and understand where to go to check outand how all those pieces come together.
I love that.
And that part of that user experiencefrom actually being on the website,
interacting, taking them throughthe stages of the buyer's journey.
It's a little complex 'cause you'retrying to balance, I need the website
to load fast enough where they're stillinterested with copy that gets to the
point but still needs to create thisstorytelling element and education piece.
(02:52):
And then the persuasion.
So you're trying to fitall these elements in.
How do we find this balancebetween too short, too long?
Are there kind of like tried andtrue practices that you recommend.
The answer is you have to test itbecause it really is context dependent.
So we find that there aresome best practices and
we'll talk about those today.
So I don't want anyone to walkaway thinking she's just gonna be
a consultant and say, it depends.
(03:13):
But my headline is, it reallydoes matter who your audience is.
It does matter what your product is.
So if you have a really simpleproduct and you have one product,
it's a very different journey.
If you sell 500 products and they'recustomizable and very complex and
similarly, if it's like a reallyniche problem that immediately people
can understand how you solve it.
(03:33):
Perfect.
But if you have to help themfigure out where to go and what's
right for them, there's a lot ofhandholding that goes through that.
So it all depends.
But at the end of the day, the firststarting place everyone needs to do
and most websites have wrong, is thatany page somebody lands on, whether
it's a homepage, which is kind of whatwe normally think of as the starting
place but sometimes it's product pages,sometimes it's a dedicated landing page.
(03:57):
Any place someone might startneeds to be able to answer three
questions right off the bat.
What it is that this site is selling,who it's selling it to and why that
person should buy that product.
Particularly from this business.
That's a lot to answer in a small amountof space and we need to really get that
answer right in order to sell effectively.
(04:17):
But first and foremost, mostcompanies aren't even putting that
information on those key pages.
That is very helpful information.
When it comes to kinda tryto true practices, what about
the trends and the changes?
Have there been any trends or changesthat you've seen in the last five
to 10 years or when it comes to CRO?
That's a great question.
I think there are lots ofpieces that are always changing.
(04:38):
There are things that have beentrendy, that have turned out to not
really be a great idea for conversion.
And then there are things thatpeople were a little afraid of
maybe impacting conversion thatturned out to actually not matter.
So the one that comes to mind for meis a lot of the templates you'll find
on Shopify or BigCommerce or theseplatforms say, Hey, put this scrolling
banner as your homepage banner.
(04:58):
The first thing people seeare these sort of things that
automatically scroll through.
Great.
I can put like five to six differentmarketing messages and people
can click on what interests them.
That sounds good in principlebut it turns out people engage
even less with that whole banner.
Any one of them.
They click on them less, theybounced at a higher rate if they're
seeing a lot of those things.
(05:19):
And so we're often just testing,can we get it right with one?
Can we get to one brand message andthen maybe intersperse some of those
influential pieces and marketingmessages elsewhere on the site.
But that's kind of an examplethat's very common practice.
It's been trendy to have thator to do these video overlays.
And at the end of the day areactually distracting people from
the main reason they're there.
(05:40):
Absolutely.
And I think that just highlights theimportance of testing things out.
Something you may think would be a greatidea ends up failing and then something
that you didn't think would have aneffect actually ends up working better.
So it's something you haveto attest an experiment.
Is there a certain length of timethat you usually recommend a test
or an experiment to say, Hey, we'refeeling confident in this decision, we
should test something different now.
Yeah.
(06:00):
We use three criteria fordeciding if something has
gotten what we need out of it.
We always let test run for at leasttwo weeks because someone shopping on
the weekend might have different intentthan someone on a Wednesday morning.
And we like to see that full cycle twice.
A lot of companies wanna test in a day ortwo and that's gonna bias your results.
You don't know how that's gonna hold up.
We also look for a minimum sample sizethat we determine ahead of time, so
(06:23):
we don't let our own biases creep inlike, oh, it looks like it's winning
but we didn't actually get enough data.
And then we also look for statisticalsignificance that this result is actually
gonna be different than this one.
And in most likelihood andthe highest likelihood.
So those are kind of the threethings that we're looking for and
the combination of three things giveus confidence to turn off a test.
(06:43):
The TLDR, make sure you let it run forat least two weeks and make sure that
you have a significant sample size.
Yeah, I was kind of curious, as faras the things can be seasonal or
yearly but even that shorter cycle ofthe two weeks, I feel like is a good
timeframe 'cause again, you get theWednesday morning, the Saturday kind
of gives you that bigger picture lookbut speaking about data as a whole,
we can learn a lot from our data butsome people, I just don't feel like
(07:06):
they don't know how to utilize it orthey don't know how to interpret it.
So what's your approachto making sense of data?
What data do you use?
What's just fluff data?
What do you focus on?
I find that there's twoextremes of people that show up.
I've met many people who just close thedoor on the data, know it's there but
don't really know what to do with it.
So don't really look at it.
And then the other side, I know peoplewho will have their Google Analytics
(07:27):
live streaming, how many people areon their site right now, how many
people are ordering and really reactiveto what's happening in this moment.
And I try to sit in the middleof that as a UX researcher.
My passion and my training has ledme to start with a question first.
So before I even look at the data,I'm trying to figure out what it
is that I need to learn about.
And in order to know what the questionshould be, I should know what the goal is.
(07:49):
So if the goal is, hey, we shouldfigure out how do we get more
people to convert on mobile devices?
Something I might wonderabout is, where are people on
mobile devices getting stuck?
Okay, that gives me some cleardata points of what to look for.
Where are they coming in, what pages,what's the conversion rate from this
page to this page for this group?
And then what's the overallconversion to order?
(08:10):
So that gives me a really clear focus.
I can predefine the five to 10data points I might need to examine
and to go answer that question.
I think the risk that we have is if wejust look at this big sea of data and
hope that something interesting popsout to us and take action on it that can
end up being pretty distracting or maybetaking us away from our primary goal.
Absolutely.
And I think the data speaks foritself, but there's other things
(08:32):
that can't be spoken through data.
Like, the user experience or thefeeling or the thoughts that they
have about a company or even thosesticking points that you mentioned.
Sometimes called friction within thebuyer's journey where they get stuck or
they hit an obstacle, either the form istoo long or the button isn't working right
or just take 'em through this process thatthey didn't expect and they get stuck.
They lose confidence.
What are some ways that you'retrying to reduce the friction
(08:54):
within the buyer's journey?
We're creating these hypotheses of thingsthat might do better than something else
based on what problems we think there are.
And sometimes we get stuck and wedon't really know what's driving
the data that we're seeing andwe're not getting traction on these
changes we think should be working.
And that's where that qualitativedata can be really helpful.
So to your point, sometimes weactually need to figure out how
to get into our customer's heads.
(09:16):
And the best way to do it'sactually to talk to them.
So we do a lot of qualitative research.
There's some really good methods for thatwhere you can observe people, have them
think aloud about what they're seeingand observing and where they get stuck.
If you get a handful of people todo that, you can start to see themes
that come out that then you canaddress in a follow-up response.
But we also do interviewsand other things.
(09:37):
So it really all depends.
It all comes down to what is thegoal that we're trying to accomplish?
What's the problem and whatis kind of the solution or the
hypothesis we need to explore?
So at the end of the day.
You've gotta all bring it back toyour business goals and not get
distracted by, oh, this one customersaid this one thing, let's go fix that.
So taking that step back, bringing in thedata that matters and setting aside the
(09:57):
data that isn't as important right nowbut knowing it's available in the future.
Absolutely.
When you mentioned that just remindedme of some of the small business
owners who will post like their worstreview where it's like the worst
grilled cheese sandwich I've ever had.
And they'll post thatpublicly or just as a display.
Like, Hey, you know what?
This is the worst grilled cheese sandwich.
Come on in and try it.
Almost as if it's a badge of honor.
But these thoughts and feelings aboutyour brand and what people review you
(10:20):
about, that's our perception of yourbusiness and that experience that you
have through them is gonna impact.
Yeah.
That made me think of this very commonthing that we do, I think anyone listening
to this podcast could do themselves.
What do I put on my websiteas my brand message?
The first place you shouldgo are the people who have
actually purchased your product.
So my favorite question to do is toask people, how would you describe this
(10:43):
product to a friend or to a family memberor whoever the relevant person would be?
And if you get enough of thoseanswers back, you're gonna get a much
better piece of copy to put on yourwebsite than as the team who's really
close to this product, who's reallypassionate about what it's gonna solve.
The words that you choose aren't gonnabe the same as your customer who's
gonna really boil it down to the basics.
(11:03):
So use your customers, engage withthem as a way to figure out the best
way to resonate with future customers.
That is really smart.
I really like that.
'cause yes, what they explicitlysay will directly affect how people
perceive your business and your website.
We're just too close to ourproduct to make that clear
picture and representation.
I was gonna ask about the tools andwhen it comes to finding out about
(11:25):
the user experience and using thatto improve our conversion rates.
Things like AI, heat maps,tracking and cookies.
Are any of these tools helpful andrelevant to some of the work that you do?
And can you tell me more aboutthe tools that you're using?
Yeah, I would say yes to all of them.
I think tools kind of at thesame way I think of data where
(11:46):
there are lots of options.
We have to be really careful notto get distracted by them but if we
know what we're trying to accomplish,we can figure out where to go.
So, with the example we just talkedabout, maybe you ask a thousand
customers to describe your business.
Now you've got a huge set ofqualitative data and you could go
through and label them and try to sortthem out and that could be helpful.
(12:07):
But you could also shortcut that by askingAI to do it and seeing how close that gets
to kind of boiling it down to what are thethree to five things you're seeing there.
So I do think it's worth working withan expert to construct the questions
and the things that you're askingbut you can leverage technologies
that are out there to shortcut theanalysis or the synthesis of the data.
(12:27):
And similarly, some of the othertools out there, like the AB testing
tools and all these things, theycome together only if you know
what it is that you're tryingto accomplish with them.
So a lot of companies I workwith, I'll say, Hey, do you
have click tracking available?
A heat mapping tool?
And nine outta 10 are like, yeah, I'vehad that on there since the beginning.
And they were kind of proud 'cause ofcourse you have to have that on your site.
That's what every goode-commerce business does.
(12:49):
But I ask them what they've learnedfrom it or what they've done with it.
And I think that's often like, I'mnot really sure and that's kind
of the same thing where you canhave it, it's good to have it.
You can look back at data but unlessyou have a question that you're
trying to answer, it's hard toget value at a lot of these tools.
Absolutely.
It's one thing to get the informationbut do you act upon it and make
use of that data after the fact?
(13:10):
And have you ever found an instance where,maybe they just tried to jump on a piece
of data and change something for the sakeof changing it and it ended up hurting the
results that they thought would improve?
I just feel sometimes it's like we getinto early and feel like, I just need to
change this, when we should really justleave it alone and let things play out.
Yes.
(13:31):
Many times.
I think the most common scenario thatcomes to mind, that a lot of times
companies will say, our site's just old.
It looks bad, it's kindof clunky, it's slow.
Let's just throw it out and try againand sometimes if they take the time to
try again and compare the two of whatwas there versus what's the new thing?
The new thing actually is hurting them.
(13:51):
They're getting less revenue,their conversion rates down.
There's something going on that wefail to anticipate in rolling out this
new site that looks good, is faster.
Checks a lot of boxes and kindof slow that process down.
Our best case scenario is to rollout big changes but test them against
each other so that we can pull backand start again if that happens.
I have a client who I would shine alight on as making some really strong
(14:14):
choices in this way where they reallywanna move the way their graphics
and their illustrations are done.
They have a new brand style andthey also have some new layouts and
copy they wanna do and they've justdone a really good job at being
tenacious at testing those changes.
And if they don't work.
Okay, we'll try again.
And they come up with another thingthat fits the new brand guidelines
but will serve the customerbetter than what's there now.
(14:37):
Absolutely.
And I think that's a testament toputting something out there, testing
things a little bit and not beingafraid to go back and change things.
It's not like you have to perfectsomething over eight months or
eight years until you finallyget it absolutely perfect.
It'll never be perfect but I feelputting it out there, you learn
through that experience, throughtesting and then changing based on
that feedback, it's just invaluable.
(14:58):
And I think that some of our bestlearnings come from when something
doesn't work in the way that we expect.
And I think knowing ahead of time whatwe thought was gonna happen, having
a hypothesis of how this thing willoutperform this thing because of this,
well, if that doesn't hold up, we'velearned something really valuable about
the customer, about the site experience,about our own knowledge that's there.
Absolutely.
(15:18):
Now, for those interested in gettingconnected with you and learning more about
you online, where can people find you?
Our company site is experiment zone.com.
I'm also on LinkedIn, AJ Davis.
There's probably a hundred of us.
So Austin, Texas is our location.
You can reach out to mevia message on LinkedIn.
One of the offers I like to make toanyone listening to the podcast is
(15:39):
to hit me up for a virtual coffee.
At the beginning of my career, asI mentioned, I was in finance and
then I moved into UX and technologyand kind of moved around a bit.
And the reason I even made that changewas because I had a hundred coffees
with a hundred different people,and I want to just give that back.
So hit me up for a virtual coffeeor if you're in Austin, let me
know and we can meet in person.
(16:00):
That is wonderful, and we'll have thoselinks available down on the show notes
and the description for everybody.
Now, AJ would there be a resource either,podcasts, books, YouTube channels,
places where people can find out moreabout everything that you've learned or
specifically conversion rate optimization?
We have a podcast, it's calledthe Experiment Zone Podcast,
I'll make a plug for it.
You can come watch us on YouTube.
(16:21):
We do some screen share and somelive critiques of stores but
we also have an audio version.
So check us out theExperiment Zone podcast.
Very nice.
And then just wanted to askmore about an example of a
business that you worked with.
Where after coming in with yourspecial magic, the special sauce,
what were some of the results thatyou were able to get them from the
before and after with their business?
(16:43):
Yeah, we have one client in particularthat stands out because they were
really wanting to resonate with peoplewho would visit the landing page and
they had lots of information and wedid a research project with their sales
team and ended up increasing theirconversion rate on the page by 120%.
Just because we boiled it down to thekey things that mattered instead of
(17:03):
having lots of overwhelming information.
So that's one test but we have otherclients where we've been working with
them for years and we've helped reshapetheir business strategy and their
pricing and their design and styleso we can really become an integrated
part of the team and really helpgrow the business in the long term.
Absolutely, and I feel a lot of businessesare just leaving money on the table.
(17:24):
You're already paying for thevisitors to come to your site or
you created the content and it'sstarting to pick up traction.
Why wouldn't you want toget another sale from that?
It's a no brainer.
Yeah.
What would it look like to go froma 1% conversion rate to even 1.2%?
Right.
A lot of businesses haven't thoughtthrough the math on that but it can
have a huge ROI impact to not have toinvest additional right now in marketing.
(17:47):
Grow your business and thenyou can reinvest that and just
the whole thing will grow.
So pausing or waiting too long oninvesting on that piece of the puzzle
makes everyone's job harder on your team.
And we're great compliments to teams thatare focused on getting people to the site.
Absolutely.
Now with everything that you'redoing, what are you looking
forward to most in 2025?
Are you launching any new initiatives?
(18:08):
Anything exciting coming through?
Are you kind of sticking withthe same game plan that's been
working for you all these years?
I'm publishing my first book, soI'll give a little plug for that.
It's a broader topic than CRO, it'scalled Usability for the World.
And we're going planning to publishmultiple versions of it, tackling
different key problems in the world.
This first one is focused on buildingbetter cities and communities.
(18:30):
So I'll give another plug, which is checkus out on usability for the world.com.
Very exciting.
Aj I wanted to ask more about any othertopic or anything we haven't woven
into what we're talking about yet?
To make sure we highlight?
I think we've covered all thethings I was expecting too.
I think you had a question along theway around other episodes of yours
that I've listened to and impact.
(18:51):
So I do have an answer to that if youwant to wrap up with that question.
Absolutely.
So aj tell me more about some ofthe impacts other entrepreneurs
or lessons have had for you.
I was just listening to your podcast.
An episode you did recently was aroundthe use of improv in business and that
one in particular really resonatedwith me because I too have done a lot
(19:12):
of improv classes and my story's alittle different than the guest you
had but he's using it as a businessto teach people about communication.
But for me, I started using itjust in how comfortable I was.
I would not be doing podcasts todayif I didn't take improv classes.
Just taught me to think on my feet andbe scrappy and kind of embrace what ends
up coming out of my mouth as I'm talking.
(19:33):
So it was really cool to hear aboutsomeone who's really specialized in
that and I thought you guys had areally good conversation about that.
So if you've missed that episode,definitely go back and listen to it.
I appreciate and it was such agreat conversation at the end.
We even went through alittle exercise for wordplay
association, which is really cool.
Just thinking on your toes andusing those communication skills
for other real life applications,I think it's really impactful.
(19:55):
AJ, we appreciate you sharing yourtime and all the tips and tricks and
knowledge you've shared with us today.
Make sure you go check out thelinks available down the show notes
and the description and appreciateall that you've done for us.
Thank you aj.
Thanks so much for having me on.
It was a good conversation.
It was a pleasure.
Thank you.
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