December 10, 2024 • 46 mins
Join us for an enlightening conversation with Matthew Stafford, the Shopify optimization guru from Build Grow Scale, as he shares his inspiring journey from running a concrete business to making waves in the e-commerce world. Discover how Matthew transitioned to online entrepreneurship, using innovative marketing strategies like personalized ads to drive significant revenue on platforms like Shopify. His story highlights the growing importance of having a direct-to-consumer presence, especially with the challenges third-party sellers face on platforms like Amazon.
Unpack the secrets of boosting e-commerce conversions as we explore the transformative power of customer reviews and the critical role of search functionality. With over 200 reviews, a product can see dramatic improvement in conversion rates due to increased trust. Matthew and our hosts delve into how search-driven traffic converts at double the rate, emphasizing the necessity of a user-friendly interface and trust-building design elements. Learn from real-life examples like Cubcoats, where search insights led to the creation of a successful product.
Dive into the nuances of data-driven revenue optimization strategies and the power of specialization. Matthew shares how data-driven decisions can lead to improved customer interactions and increased profitability without sacrificing user experience. Discover the impact of psychological triggers in boosting sales and how engaging with customer feedback, even from negative reviews, can be pivotal in enhancing conversion rates. Matthew also shares entrepreneurial engagement opportunities and personal growth tips, rounding out a comprehensive episode packed with actionable insights for both aspiring and seasoned entrepreneurs.
How to connect with Matthew?
Website: https://buildgrowscale.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/build-grow-scale/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bgs_ecom_education
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BuildGrowScaleEcommEducation
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/windowsuccess
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a
show for anyone who wants to betheir own boss.
If you sit in a cubicle everyday and know you are capable of
more, then join us.
This show will help you build abusiness and grow your passive
income streams in just a fewshort hours per day.
And now your hosts, serialentrepreneurs David Shomer and
(00:22):
Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast.
On today's episode, we areagain joined by Matthew Stafford
.
If you didn't catch it, matthewwas a guest on episode 192 back
in the summer of 2023.
It was one of our mostdownloaded episodes, as Amazon
had just rolled out some newinventory fees at that time and
(00:46):
third-party sellers were puttingmore resources into their D2C
websites.
Since our first recording, thebelt has continued to tighten
for Amazon sellers and having aD2C website presence is no
longer a good option.
Rather, it is a necessity forsurvival in the competitive
e-commerce landscape.
(01:10):
Matthew is known as the madscientist behind the data and
development of Build Grow Scaleand their revenue optimization
system.
He is regarded as a top Shopifyoptimization expert and has
extensive experience ine-commerce, having run his own
companies for over 35 years.
In this episode, we'll diveinto the evolving landscape for
third-party sellers, increaseddemand for Shopify optimization
(01:32):
and how BuildGrowthScaleleverages extensive revenue data
to drive impactful results fortheir clients.
Matthew, welcome to the show.
I'm glad to be back, absolutely.
So, to start things off, canyou share with our listeners a
little bit about your backgroundand what has changed since your
last podcast appearance?
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah.
So I would say obviously, likeyou said in the intro, I've got
about 35 years of businessexperience.
A lot of that was back in theday.
It was in the brick and mortarindustry.
I actually had a commercialconcrete business and I grew
that up to about 25 employeesand we traveled all around the
(02:14):
country.
We're actually on the road about200 days a year and it was
difficult, it was a hard lifeand I kind of stumbled across
this.
It was actually a t-shirt siteand you could put up marketing
ideas and then run ads to thatand sell it, and so I kind of
(02:37):
started playing with that atnight, you know, even on the
road, you know, even on the roadand I had some pretty good
success in the first, you know,first couple of months.
I had made thousands andthousands of dollars, had a
couple of hits and I thought,wow, this is really really
amazing.
I can actually create revenuewithout having to travel,
(02:58):
without it being weatherdependent, because we could be
on the road and it could rainthree, four days in a week and
we literally would be sitting ina hotel room, um, racking up
money and and the whole nineyards.
And so I thought, wow, this ispretty intriguing, and I kind of
set a goal, uh, to be online,um, a hundred percent within
(03:18):
five years, and it actuallyhappened almost to the month of
you know, when I had set thatgoal, and I remember kicking
myself going, man, maybe Ishould have set that goal to be
three years, but it just.
It's amazing how, once you getsomething in your head, how you
follow through or things justhappen to lay out that way Very
(03:42):
nice, Very nice Now.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
I love that way.
Very nice, Very nice Now.
I love that story.
I love your background inconcrete and building a very
successful concrete business.
Now, at what point did you didyou realize that, hey, this
could be something this couldlike, there's something here.
This is legitimate.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, so it's funny and this there's a little comic
to this and probably reveals alittle bit about my sense of
humor.
One of the shirts what I did isI got pretty good at running
those ads and I started learninghow to get names off of
Facebook by user IDs, and sowhat I did is I created a shirt
(04:24):
that said Schmidt happensinstead of the opposite, and
then I targeted everybody whoselast name was Schmidt.
That's awesome.
And when I launched that shirt,um, I literally launched it
like at five or 6 PM and uh,went to dinner uh, probably a
(04:45):
couple of drinks, I think it wasabout 10 o'clock.
I logged back in and looked atit and it had literally gone
viral.
I'd already done like $12,000in sales and I was selling a $30
shirt for like $2 acquisitioncost because people were sharing
it and doing all this otherstuff.
(05:06):
And by the time I woke up in themorning and we had cleared a
little over 20 grand in profit.
Um, and I was like, oh my God,like you can have an idea?
And, um, the user base isinfinite.
And the silly thing was, uh, Ikept, I kept looking at the
number of people that it saidwas my audience size and I
(05:29):
thought that it just can't beright.
There has to be more than that.
And so I spent a couple hoursand this is the next day and did
okay, everybody with the nameSchmidt in Maine, everybody with
the name Schmidt in Maine,everybody with the name Schmidt
in Vermont, everybody, and I didevery single state, and I ended
up having about 30 times largeraudience.
(05:52):
And, uh, so I launched it againand we 10xed the result.
So I had made about a hundredgrand on that shirt in less than
48 hours, 50 hours and I waslike okay, I can make a living
online.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
That's awesome.
That is awesome and talk aboutknowing your target audience and
having a very specific avatar.
That's a great story.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Then I actually even did like little onesies and put,
like I'm a little Schmidt, sothere was just like all kinds of
stuff, so we played off of that, created a whole page around it
and that that shirt went on tosell just an enormous amount.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
That's awesome.
I love that story so well.
Really looking forward togetting into today's podcast.
Now, one thing that moste-commerce sellers deal with as
they're getting into e-commerceis they ask themselves the
question where do I sell?
Do I go to Etsy, do I go toShopify?
Do I build my own website?
And so my question to you ishow has the evolving landscape
(06:57):
of third-party sellersinfluenced your strategies at
Build Grow Scale and I would say, when I refer to third-party
sellers, let's talk to Amazonsellers is that is probably the
largest population of people.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah for sure.
In fact, a lot of people allthe time when I tell them I'm in
e-commerce, that's one of thevery first things they say oh,
amazon.
And I actually say, no, wedon't deal with the Amazon.
And the reason why was when Ifirst, when we first started BGS
, my business partner had Amazonlistings and he had done really
(07:29):
well with it, but he had alsogot burned.
Where they went, they sent hima notice and said, hey, you have
to tell us who your supplier is, how much you're paying all
this other stuff, becausesomeone said that this is
fraudulent.
And then within two weeks, theyhad went to his supplier and
gave them a contract for twoyears worth of sales, white
(07:50):
label that took it and he lost,you know, hundreds of thousands
of dollars.
It was a couple hundredthousand dollars a year product.
And so we just always said,like we're going to, if we're
going to build a business aroundsomething, we're going to own
the data, we're going to knowthe customers and uh, so we
focused on Shopify and just toto tie in the story from where
(08:14):
we started to where I am now,because I think it matters.
I got really good at Facebookads and that's why I got into
e-commerce.
I thought a different way aboutsales, and I think it had to do
with me being in the brick andmortar world and then coming
(08:35):
online.
And so what I realized was sad,or sales ads were very, um,
volatile.
Um, you could have great weeksand then you could have really
crappy weeks and then, like whenthey were redoing the algorithm
before the fourth quarter, youknow, black Friday, cyber Monday
, all that everything would dropoff a cliff.
(08:56):
And so I was super frustrated.
And we had a, we had a kitchensupply site at the time, and so
I started looking into the data.
I I saw an ad online.
Um, a guy said hey, um, I'll dosix calls with you for a
thousand dollars and teach youGoogle analytics, and there's a
(09:16):
whole bunch of data in therethat you can use, um to make
more sales.
Um, after the very first call,I was like, oh my goodness, like
this, this is going to be cool.
And I just went headfirst deepdive into the analytics part of
it and that made my ads work way, way better.
(09:37):
And that's really how BGS wasbirthed.
Before that, we were teachingfunnels and sales pages and
stuff like that.
But when we realized that whenyou can use the data, start
being predictable and see whatpeople are doing and make the
user experience better, oursales were just exponentially
(09:58):
better.
And we tried that with a coupleof my other friends who had
sold t-shirts with um.
In the end, um, in that threeyear period, we ended up selling
about 15 million.
I sold about $15 million forthe t-shirts.
And uh, so I reached out to acouple of friends who had
Shopify sites and said hey, Ithink, um, I'm onto something I
(10:18):
would love to like work on yoursite.
If it works, you can pay me, ifit doesn't work, obviously, you
don't have to pay me.
And uh, we took.
The very first site that Iworked on was Organifi.
Um.
They had done 2.75 million theyear before I helped them and in
90 days I had them on a runrate of over 9 million Um.
(10:40):
They ended up doing 16 millionthe first 12 months that I
worked with them.
So almost a seven X um ended uphaving about 50,000 members on
continuity.
I mean it was a huge success.
The second one I helped, uh,they were doing about 300 grand
a month.
They thought they were reallyawesome and that is an awesome
(11:01):
number.
I'm not knocking it Um, butwithin six months we had them at
2.7 million a month.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
And I was like, okay, lightning, lightning didn't
just strike me and I got lucky.
This actually works.
And that's really what spawnedus going into that and and,
honestly, I haven't run Facebookads now in eight, nine years.
I just I don't even have a cluehow to do it.
Because I said I'm going tofigure out the data, everybody
(11:29):
else is teaching Facebook adsand you got to do all this other
stuff.
But the site doesn't work.
And I was like, when I startedlooking at my own site, I said
traffic's not really the problem.
Everybody thinks they need moretraffic, but the average
e-commerce website convertsaround 2%.
And so I'm like, okay, ahundred people came, 98 people
(11:52):
left.
They want to get a hundred morepeople for two more sales.
I'm thinking, why don't I gettwo more of those 98 that left
and I'll double my business onthe same ad spend.
And that was kind of whatstarted the foray into data and
using data to actually run thebusiness.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
I love that perspective and the thought
about running traffic, trafficnot being the problem.
I think that's something youknow.
I personally I've got thatwrong not being the problem.
I think that's something youknow.
I personally I've got thatwrong where it seems like you
kind of get hooked on, you know,trying to get those two out of
(12:35):
100 sales, and so when you lookat a site and you're trying to
get it from, say, twoconversions to four conversions,
what would be some types ofoptimizations that you would
look to to to make that jump?
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yeah, so I'm going to um I'll share several um as we
go through this, but I again Iwant to tie it back to your
Amazon sellers.
Uh, because, uh, Amazon, theirconversion rate is much, much,
much higher, Like peopleliterally go there to buy, and
so I think it's somewhere in the70% range.
(13:10):
It's extremely high.
And so I always thought like,okay, let's look at their site,
see what they're doing thatworks, and then try those things
over here and see what we cangarner from it.
And not everything worked atall.
There was a few things did.
(13:31):
One reviews.
Reviews are huge, Doesn'tmatter if it's on Amazon or if
it's on your website and theyhad released a study saying that
once your product gets to 200reviews, it can literally cut
your conversion in half.
So if it took 10 visitors toget a sale with 200 reviews, now
(13:55):
all of a sudden it's only gonnatake five, and so like a much,
much better conversion rate.
And so we started applying thatto the website, making the
reviews front and center.
We actually even borrowed thecredibility of the Amazon yellow
, because everyone knows thatand it's a psychological trigger
of trust, and so we changed allthe reviews on all of our sites
(14:19):
to that.
Amazon yellow made sure that ifthey didn't have 200, we took a
combined site reviews and putthe bigger number on every
product until they startedgetting enough, and we saw huge
advances from that.
Another one was and this is adamaging emission we used to
(14:42):
think that if you didn't havevery many products, you didn't
need search, because they'regoing to be able to see what you
have.
You know you need to have likeeight, 10 products or more,
Otherwise search isn't a bigdeal.
What we found out is search isa really big deal because people
don't just type in what productthey're looking for, they
(15:02):
actually type in their problem.
And so when we started trackingthat, we started seeing what
people were typing in and whatproducts got typed in the most.
And a good example was one ofour clients, Cubcoats, and they
don't mind if you tell the story.
Their top two search terms werefor products that they didn't
(15:26):
have.
It was a unicorn, and thenunicorn spelled wrong.
Well, they had all theseproducts that are like a stuffed
animal that you unzip it, itturns into a hoodie for a little
kid.
Well, all the kids wantedunicorns and they didn't know
that.
But when we tracked it in thesearch.
We saw that.
So they created a unicorn andthen they released it on Amazon
(15:46):
Prime Day and they did a half amillion dollars in 24 hours.
So we would have never known,had no idea, if we weren't
tracking what was happening inthe search.
The other thing that we'verealized over time is in search
on your e-commerce site, thattraffic converts twice as high
as your normal site traffic andits value is almost four times
(16:10):
the average visitor.
And so you know we had to tryto, we have to try to determine
why that is, and we think, justif someone can find what they're
looking for, easy navigation toit, they tend to buy more, and
so that again we're like, okay,how do we make navigation easier
(16:30):
?
And that started.
Okay, the homepage is no longermeant to sell.
It's only purpose is to buildtrust and then easy navigation
to what we're looking for, andwhen we did that, conversions
went up, and so I would saythat's a really big one.
Reviews and search traffic.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Very nice, very nice.
I love that you looked atAmazon as an example, because
they certainly have split testedit a lot and those stars being
social proof.
I think that is one of the bigdifferentiators between
e-commerce and brick and mortarIs you get to hear the opinions
(17:10):
of people that bought that exactproduct and you know, you can
see what they like, what theydon't like, and so I really
really like that.
And the search bar is anotherone that I viewing that as a
spot to get information fromyour customers.
You know, if it was brick andmortar, somebody would come in
(17:32):
and say do you have a unicornhoodie?
That's essentially the searchbar right, and framing it that
way, I think is really reallyinteresting, really interesting.
So one of the things as I haveprepped for this episode is, in
my inner accountant loves thisis that you make data-driven
decisions.
You let data really guide theway and with your pool of
(17:57):
clients at Build, grow Scale,you have access to a ton of data
, and so how does your team kindof collate that data and then
how are they making data-drivendecisions that benefits the
group of clients you serve?
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, so we actually call them revenue optimizers.
We coined our own term becauseso many people use CRO.
And the funny thing is, whenthey would come to us, they
would go oh, I want to increasemy conversion rate.
I want to increase myconversion rate.
And I'm like, well, we want todo that, of course, but there's
(18:37):
good ways to do that and poorways to do that.
Like, we can put all yourproducts on sale and your
conversion rate will go up, butyou're going to do a bunch more
work for not a lot more money.
And so we look at the site veryholistic and the data that
we're looking at is how do weget the user to take the next
(18:58):
action?
And so, instead of looking at awhole site and going, okay, we
want to make more sales, webroke it down even farther and
said if they land on thehomepage, what is the best way
to get them to go to a filterpage?
And if they land on the filterpage, we know that if they use
filters on the side, you can getas much as a three to 500%
(19:22):
increase in conversions of thepeople that use the filters over
the people that are scrolling.
And so how do we get them touse the filters, then on the
product page, how do we get themto add to cart?
And there's so many differentelements in all of that and
there's so many differentelements in all of that.
We just got very, very granularand we've used all that data,
(19:44):
hundreds of millions.
I mean we're probably close toa billion dollars.
I've stopped saying it after400 million because it's like
okay, if I say 400 million or600 or 800 million, like nobody
actually even translates what400 million means and so that's
just an ego number at some point.
But there's a lot of data andso we've done that with every
(20:08):
page and had lots and lots ofsplit tests and I'll actually
share, just because, like yousaid, the inner account and the
data.
This is another damage to themission and a really, really
eye-opening test for us.
We used to test something on apage and then when it would win,
(20:28):
we would go look for somethingelse to try to test and win, and
that's logical.
But one of our ROs said noteverybody goes through the page
the same way.
What if we put that winningelement in another place on the
page?
And we tried it and the pageincreased and so we tried it in
(20:49):
another spot and the pageincreased again.
And on the fourth try it waskind of like a diminishing
return, but we literallyincreased almost 50% more by
adding that winning element inother places on the page,
because not everybody goesthrough the exact same way, and
so then it was amazing how muchbigger our wins were when we
(21:13):
learned okay, success leavesclues.
Let's try that in a couple ofdifferent ways on a couple of
different pages, and many, manytimes we would get more and more
lifts from doing that.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Very nice, very nice.
Yeah, I love the data-drivendecisions and for listeners of
the show it's probably familiarwith me talking about.
I try to leave my opinion out.
If I can let data drive thedecision, that will lead to the
best outcome, and so I really,really like that.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
We do too, because we do this well.
Now it's been almost 10 yearsand this is all that we do is
just use data to make thesedecisions, and I'll tell you,
probably 50% of the tests thatwe run don't win, and that's
using data and making our bestguesses.
So I don't even understand whatthe odds would be for someone
(22:10):
to actually get wins, and Irealize that's probably why most
site owners have never tested,actually tested anything.
They just go, oh, this site'sdoing that.
I'm going to do that too, andwe tried that in the beginning,
and what we realized is a lot ofthese really big sites.
They own the traffic and sotheir traffic actually interacts
(22:32):
with their page, different thansomeone who's buying cold
traffic or interruptionmarketing.
Getting people to come to thatand that matters.
The context and the frame ofmind that they come to your site
with is different.
So the people that I'm goingback to we weave this back to
one of your original questionswith the Amazon sellers.
(22:52):
A lot of them come to us andthey try to mimic a lot of what
was on Amazon.
Well, we've already done that.
We know what works, whatdoesn't work, and we can help
your Shopify site do really welland then you can actually even
do fulfillment through that,where you get a lot of the data.
So the people who have come tous and optimize their Shopify
(23:14):
site or built their Shopify siteto be another channel has
worked really well.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Very good, Very good, that makes a lot of sense.
So next question I'd like totalk about is a trend going on,
and that is with mobile.
There's a lot of people I don'tknow what the stat is, maybe
you do but the trend of peopleshopping on their phones instead
(23:41):
of desktop has significantlyincreased over the next couple
of years, or over the lastcouple of years.
What are some ways thatentrepreneurs, as they're
looking at their site, what aresome things they should be
thinking about to ensure thatthey are optimized for mobile?
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Yeah, I would say the very first thing that they
should focus on is mobile, Ahundred percent.
You know, five, six years ago,when we first started, desktop
was higher and mobile was kindof catching up.
Now mobile is like 87 to 90% ofyour traffic and desktop's 10.
Traffic and desktops 10.
(24:21):
Depending on the product, thereis ones that require more
education and more real estateto sell, Cause we have some
clients have three $4,000products and so most people
aren't spending that much moneyon a phone.
They might discover it on thephone and then we retarget them
back to desktop.
So there's actually a littlenugget right there that people
can use If they find you on thephone.
(24:43):
Run a retargeting ad that takespeople back to your desktop
version of your site.
That ad will be very profitable.
We've never not seen it be veryprofitable because your desktop
experience will convert abouttwice as high as your mobile
experience, even when they'reboth highly optimized.
We've never been able.
(25:03):
In fact, we use that kind of asa rule of thumb to see if
something's broke on one or theother, and we consider a tablet
the same as desktop because youhave more real estate.
So you have mobile and then youhave desktop and tablet, and
the desktop and tablet shouldalways convert twice as high as
mobile.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Uh, no, that's.
That's really interesting, andso you know what what you're
saying is.
People are doing a lot ofresearching on their phone, but
when it's time to get the walletout, when it's time to spend
the money they are they are in.
The higher the ticket item, themore likely this is is they're
going to desktop or tablet.
Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.
(25:43):
Very, very interesting.
That's something that I havenot heard in over 250 podcasts,
but it makes complete sense andI'm thinking of some of the big
purchases that I've made and itdoes.
It starts on social media,maybe a YouTube video on the
phone, but when it's purchasetime, I do go to desktop.
(26:04):
So that, anecdotally, alsomakes sense.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Yeah, yeah, and you have a lot more real estate
there to make your pitch to theclient.
I always tell everybody yourwebsite, whether it's on mobile
or desktop.
That's your conversation withyour client, and so wherever you
can be the most conversationalor whoever in your market is the
most conversational has thebest conversation they're going
(26:27):
to make the most sales anddominate the market, and that's
why I think people that runmedia are our best referral
partners.
When the site works better,their ads work better, the
people buy more, they can scale,and hence the name build, grow
and scale.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
I want to recap what you just said.
So your number one referralsource is people that are buying
media buyers.
Yeah, yeah, that's interestingbecause, yeah, yeah, that's
interesting because they, whenyou guys run your revenue
optimization, they shine.
(27:07):
That's neat, that's really neat.
I think that's really neat.
I, you know, prior to thisinterview, would have thought of
of you guys as kind ofcompetitors and and knowing now
that it's really the opposite isreally really interesting.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, we don't, and we don't run media.
Obviously, because we optimizesites, people go, oh well, can
you do this and can you do that.
And in the beginning we did itand what we realized was
e-commerce was growing at such apace that it really required
specialists in each area.
It really required specialistsin each area, and for us to
(27:38):
really be what we wanted, wewanted to be world-class at
optimization and the userexperience on the website.
In order to do that, it justrequired focus, and so the more
things that we said no to, thebetter we got and the better
referrals we got too.
And so over time, we just yeah,we literally have said no to
(28:00):
everything other than whensomeone lands on your website or
your landing page or your salesfunnel, from there until they
give you money.
That's our, that's our focusand that's our job.
And you know we usepsychological triggers.
Psychological triggers, in fact, I would say that's probably
(28:22):
one thing that differentiated usfrom the very beginning is I
read a lot of books about thatstuff and I would read I'll just
give you an example ofoptimization Everybody on the
podcast can use this.
It's very simple.
It's the form field text.
So the text that's in your formfields.
99 out of 100 websites saysemail Enter your email.
(28:45):
Well, I was reading RobertChiodini's book and he was
talking about people don't mindgiving you information if you
give them a reason why.
And they used an example ofcutting in line.
You could ask someone if youcut in line and 80% of people
say no, 20% of people will letyou.
But if you say, hey, do youmind if I cut in line?
(29:06):
My kids are going to be latefor school that giving them a
reason.
Even if it wasn't true orwhatever, like they didn't have
to check up on it, 80% of peoplenow said yes and get in.
Let them do that.
I thought, oh, that'sinteresting.
So we're asking for the emailand we were tracking form field
errors and they were always hugeat email and phone number.
(29:26):
And uh, and I think it just was, people didn't trust you know,
um, giving out their their goodinformation and so started
testing form field language andthe one that we came on that
made a.
It was a 279% reduction inerrors like astronomical.
(29:48):
Was email required for orderconfirmation?
Well, the order confirmationemail is opened 85% of the time.
It's the number one most openedemail in e-commerce.
People want to.
They look at their orderconfirmation, make sure
everything's right.
So when we said email requiredfor order confirmation, we
(30:09):
stopped getting errors, likeliterally 300, almost 300% less
errors.
The other thing that we realizedis our abandoned cart revenue
went way up.
Well, why was that?
Because now we had their verybest email and we were actually
they were seeing those emailsinstead of it going to some
off-brand email.
And so then and this is stillbefore SMS was huge.
(30:33):
Now SMS is the number one wayto.
It's the number one largestrevenue source um for recovery,
um and uh.
So under phone, we put phonerequired for shipping
notification.
Everybody wants to know whenyour product ships and so by
doing that um, we've had as muchas a 17% lift on checkouts, um
(30:59):
for digital products on a sitethat was doing $60 million a
year.
So that we've never, ever seen,we've never, ever implemented
that and not seen it giving thema lift.
And so everybody can do that.
Just put in there required fororder confirmation, required for
shipping notification, andthat's all you have to change
(31:19):
and you'll make more sales, moremoney.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
I love that.
I love that, and at thebeginning of the podcast we were
talking about, you know goingfrom two out of 100 to four out
of 100.
And as you walk through theseexamples, you know adding the
reviews, adding the search bar,adding that type of language.
You know, can I cut in line?
My kids are late to school.
That equivalent on a website isyou can, you can see how you
(31:45):
can make that jump from two tofour and and how your traffic,
you know, becomes much morevaluable and so I love that.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
I'll give you one more, just because your audience
is Amazon driven and I got thisfrom Jay Abraham he actually
talked about using the languagethat your customers use, and a
lot of times when you'rebuilding your website, you don't
have all those reviews, youdon't have the language that
(32:15):
they use a lot of times.
And so what he did is, he said,go over to Amazon, find your
competitors or similar productsand read all of their reviews.
Use those reviews as how tomake your product descriptions.
And so we started doing thatand we started using the review
language from competitorproducts on Amazon, where they'd
(32:37):
have a thousand reviews.
We'd read 200 of them and thenliterally create our product
description off of what peopleloved, and they loved it so much
that they went back and left areview.
We use that to do our productdescriptions on our Shopify
sites and again we saw, you knowa significant increase.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Again, we saw a significant increase and the
ability to do that.
That's free.
If you want to go readcompetitive reviews, that's free
.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
And use your customer's language.
Use your client's language,they will resonate.
It will just feel better tothem and they don't even know
why.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
That's interesting.
You read a lot of one-starreviews that say the eggs stick
to this pan.
And now, when you're on yourwebsite, you're going to
highlight the non-stick youreggs won't stick to this pan.
I really like that.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Another really, really interesting.
The counterintuitive thoughtthat we've realized and done a
lot of data on is one and twostar reviews do not actually
hurt your sales.
In fact, two stars and less arethe most clicked on reviews and
they are also the highestconverting spot on your website.
(33:54):
That's really interesting, thatis really the only time that you
see that is when the person hasresponded to it and taking care
of the problem.
When they don't take care ofthe problem, you don't get a
lift.
So, people, you know and I puta lot of thought into this why
is that?
True, people do not expect youto be perfect.
(34:17):
What they do expect you to dois when you have a problem, you
take care of it.
So when you push the ones thatare less than perfect, they go
oh, these guys are truthful andnow I can see how they take care
of their problems.
I trust them.
The people that only havefive-star reviews and no poor
ones people are like oh, they'relying, so automatically there's
(34:40):
an inherent.
I don't know if I'm going toget a good thing, I don't know
if it's true or not, but thepeople that are willing to share
the stuff that's not perfect um, like early on in the podcast I
said this is a damagingadmission.
You know, we're awesome atoptimizing a website.
We would jump from optimizationoptimization option, but when
we realized that, like, successleaves clues and we would put
(35:02):
that in another spot on the pageand you go, oh, okay, well,
they actually learned somethingand got better at it and they
shared how they didn't do goodpeople.
They will like that more andtrust you more and want to do
business with you.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
That's really, really interesting, and I can think of
some shopping experiences I'vehad where I've went in and it
has been all five-star and I'vewondered huh, this seems there's
something fishy here, and sothat's really really interesting
.
So last question before we getinto the fire round, talk about
(35:39):
Build Grow Scale what type ofclients do you serve?
And a follow-on question I haveis, as I was prepping for this
podcast, I had listened toanother podcast that you were on
and someone had mentioned thatyou tend to turn down more
candidates for coming into Buildgrow scale as clients than you
(36:00):
accept, and so can you talkabout that a little bit more?
Speaker 3 (36:03):
Yeah, um, I would say so.
We have a couple of differentways that you can do business
with us.
Um, one, um, we have all kindsof free information on a YouTube
channel, our blog, et cetera,and, um, the point of that is,
hey, we'll provide value whenyour site starts doing better
than you can choose to dobusiness with us if you want to,
(36:23):
and if not, you know, awesome,like you got some value from us,
you'll tell other people, andso that's one way.
Another way is we have peoplethat they can engage with us,
where we put the entire team onthe site, do all their
optimizations, their dev work,et cetera, and so we have a
(36:44):
couple of programs where you canwork with us for eight weeks.
We have a membership that youcan join where we teach all the
time and actually interact withthe members on a weekly basis on
there's three different callsper week, so you can join the
membership.
That's like $67 a month.
And then there's also whenyou're doing about $250,000 a
(37:09):
month or more in revenue.
That's when we have a what'scalled an amplified partnership,
where we would actually do allyour split testing, your Google
Analytics and take care ofeverything on the website so
that you can focus on traffic,sourcing, customer service, and
those are the examples that Igave you early on, where we took
(37:31):
Organifi from $2.75 million to$9 million and then to $16
million within a year, and thenthe 300,000 to 2.7 million.
Those are examples of differentones that we've done.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Outstanding, outstanding.
That's good to hear and it'sgood to hear that there's
different ways to engage withBuild Grow Scale.
That learning the learningcomponent that you had talked
about is, I think, great forpeople just getting started and
you know some of the storiesthat you've told today and the
work that you've done with yourAmplified clients.
(38:06):
You know again, my inneraccount is flaring up here.
But the return on investment asan entrepreneur, that's what
you want.
You're seeking return oninvestment.
My dollars are soldiers, I'msending them out into the world
and I want, you're seekingreturn on investment.
I, my dollars, are soldiers,I'm sending them out into the
world and I want them to comeback with more soldiers.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
And what you're saying about us turning down
some too.
Uh, we've gotten to the pointnow and we've been out there and
we've done this long enough uh,that we can be a little bit
picky, like, I love coming towork, I love doing what we do,
but there's been times that wesaid yes to certain clients that
we just didn't really enjoyworking for, or we use the data
(38:45):
and said, hey, this is what'sgoing to make the most sales and
like, ah, that's not on, and weget paid based off of winning,
and so if you're not going touse the data to do that, it's
really difficult for us to feellike we're going to and who we
(39:07):
say no to and who we refer toother people, just for that
simple fact of you.
Know, we want you to loveworking with us and we want to
love working with you.
(39:27):
That's where we get the bestresults and, yeah, that's just
how we run the business.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Very nice, very nice.
Now, if people are interestedin working with Build Grow Scale
, what would be the best way?
Speaker 3 (39:40):
I mean, go right to our website at
buildgrowthscalecom and contactus and there's a form that you
can fill out.
There's a couple of differentones for different levels of
engagement.
That's super easy.
Or you could actually email meto matt at buildgrowth dot com
and I respond to those emails.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Very nice.
We'll post links to all that inthe show notes Now.
Prior to hitting record on thepodcast, you had mentioned a
really sweet offer for our fourfiring the band listeners, so
can you talk about that?
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Yeah, so we, we have an offer that's normally fifteen
hundred bucks.
It's called the audit andthat's where we'll go through
your entire site and we'll breakdown, you know, the use of the
homepage, the filter page, theproduct page, cart, and then
literally show you the thingsthat we think are asked
questions about, the things thatwe think are unclear, and it's
(40:34):
really, really eyeopening forpeople.
Easy, easy to ROI on.
It takes us about 24 hours toturn around one and we normally
charge $1,500.
For your guests, we would dothat for $500.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Outstanding, outstanding.
Well, matthew, we reallyappreciate that offer and Firing
Demand listeners, this is goingto be a podcast I'm going to
re-listen to.
There's a lot of nuggets here,uh, of great information and, uh
, matthew, this has been anoutstanding podcast.
Now, before we end the show,there is something four
(41:10):
questions we ask all of ourguests.
It's called the fire round.
Are you ready?
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Sure, I don't remember these, but yeah, let's
go All right, sounds good.
So first question what is yourfavorite book, boy?
That's difficult because I likea few.
I will tell you, and I thinkyou and I have talked about
(41:38):
maybe doing another podcastaround this.
Over the last four or fiveyears I've been on a on a deep
spiritual journey, and so I willtell you.
Uh, there's two books that uh, Ireally really like, um, that
were very, very eyeopening forme.
One was called letting go andthe other one is called dark
side of the light chasers, whichis a really weird name, but
(41:58):
essentially what it is islearning how to accept all parts
of yourself as you know who youare.
And so, yeah, those two books,I would say, made a huge
difference.
One and just how I show up inlife.
And the funny thing is thatreally actually affects how we
do business too.
And so a lot of times peoplewill be like, oh no, I want the
(42:22):
tactics, I want the this or thatand, believe it or not, the
more work that we do on the sixinches between our ears affects
our business a lot more than thetactics do.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Absolutely, and there is going to be a second part to
this podcast and we're going todive deep into that.
So listeners stay tuned.
Second fire round question whatare your hobbies?
Speaker 3 (43:02):
did a half Ironman twice.
Um, I love exercise.
I think that, uh, you know, onetaking care of our body gives
us a better quality of life,because that's how we experience
everything.
Um, so I was yeah, I'd sayexercise cycling, and I like to
play tennis.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Very nice, very nice.
What is one thing you do notmiss about working for the man?
Speaker 3 (43:19):
What is one thing you do not miss about working for
the man?
Well, the very last time that Iworked for someone, I asked for
vacation time and I was thenumber one salesman and they
said no and I thought, oh okay.
And I, literally about an hourand a half later, about 90
(43:42):
minutes later, I went in andgave them my two weeks notice
and they're like what do youmean?
Yeah, I just realized like I'mnot going to show up and be your
number one employee and when Ineed something that you're not
willing to provide that for me.
So, yeah, just that I, yeah, Iwant to be able to control my
own destiny.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Very nice.
And final question what do youthink sets apart successful
entrepreneurs from those whogive up, fail or never get
started?
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Hmm, well, I will tell you another thing that I've
learned and it's changed mysuccess trajectory is I used to
think I was really smart and ahard worker, and I had a really,
(44:37):
really intelligent person saywhat if you weren't smart, what
does that do for you?
And I was like, oh wow, thatgives you a lot more
open-mindedness, openpossibilities for other areas
that you could do better in, andso I would say, go into things
with the child's eyes, becurious instead of thinking that
you know the answer.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Very nice.
I really like that answer,Matthew.
This has been an outstandingpodcast.
I want to thank you for yourtime today.
If people are interested ingetting in touch with you,
what's the best way?
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Yeah, matt, at buildandgrowthscalecom works.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
All right, sounds good.
Well, thank you everyone fortuning in to the Firing the man
podcast and we'll see you nextweek.
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a
show for anyone who wants to betheir own boss.
If you sit in a cubicle everyday and know you are capable of
more, then join us.
This show will help you build abusiness and grow your passive
income streams in just a fewshort hours per day.
And now your hosts, serialentrepreneurs David Shomer and
(00:22):
Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast.
On today's episode, we areagain joined by Matthew Stafford
.
If you didn't catch it, matthewwas a guest on episode 192 back
in the summer of 2023.
It was one of our mostdownloaded episodes, as Amazon
had just rolled out some newinventory fees at that time and
(00:46):
third-party sellers were puttingmore resources into their D2C
websites.
Since our first recording, thebelt has continued to tighten
for Amazon sellers and having aD2C website presence is no
longer a good option.
Rather, it is a necessity forsurvival in the competitive
e-commerce landscape.
(01:10):
Matthew is known as the madscientist behind the data and
development of Build Grow Scaleand their revenue optimization
system.
He is regarded as a top Shopifyoptimization expert and has
extensive experience ine-commerce, having run his own
companies for over 35 years.
In this episode, we'll diveinto the evolving landscape for
third-party sellers, increaseddemand for Shopify optimization
(01:32):
and how BuildGrowthScaleleverages extensive revenue data
to drive impactful results fortheir clients.
Matthew, welcome to the show.
I'm glad to be back, absolutely.
So, to start things off, canyou share with our listeners a
little bit about your backgroundand what has changed since your
last podcast appearance?
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah.
So I would say obviously, likeyou said in the intro, I've got
about 35 years of businessexperience.
A lot of that was back in theday.
It was in the brick and mortarindustry.
I actually had a commercialconcrete business and I grew
that up to about 25 employeesand we traveled all around the
(02:14):
country.
We're actually on the road about200 days a year and it was
difficult, it was a hard lifeand I kind of stumbled across
this.
It was actually a t-shirt siteand you could put up marketing
ideas and then run ads to thatand sell it, and so I kind of
(02:37):
started playing with that atnight, you know, even on the
road, you know, even on the roadand I had some pretty good
success in the first, you know,first couple of months.
I had made thousands andthousands of dollars, had a
couple of hits and I thought,wow, this is really really
amazing.
I can actually create revenuewithout having to travel,
(02:58):
without it being weatherdependent, because we could be
on the road and it could rainthree, four days in a week and
we literally would be sitting ina hotel room, um, racking up
money and and the whole nineyards.
And so I thought, wow, this ispretty intriguing, and I kind of
set a goal, uh, to be online,um, a hundred percent within
(03:18):
five years, and it actuallyhappened almost to the month of
you know, when I had set thatgoal, and I remember kicking
myself going, man, maybe Ishould have set that goal to be
three years, but it just.
It's amazing how, once you getsomething in your head, how you
follow through or things justhappen to lay out that way Very
(03:42):
nice, Very nice Now.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
I love that way.
Very nice, Very nice Now.
I love that story.
I love your background inconcrete and building a very
successful concrete business.
Now, at what point did you didyou realize that, hey, this
could be something this couldlike, there's something here.
This is legitimate.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, so it's funny and this there's a little comic
to this and probably reveals alittle bit about my sense of
humor.
One of the shirts what I did isI got pretty good at running
those ads and I started learninghow to get names off of
Facebook by user IDs, and sowhat I did is I created a shirt
(04:24):
that said Schmidt happensinstead of the opposite, and
then I targeted everybody whoselast name was Schmidt.
That's awesome.
And when I launched that shirt,um, I literally launched it
like at five or 6 PM and uh,went to dinner uh, probably a
(04:45):
couple of drinks, I think it wasabout 10 o'clock.
I logged back in and looked atit and it had literally gone
viral.
I'd already done like $12,000in sales and I was selling a $30
shirt for like $2 acquisitioncost because people were sharing
it and doing all this otherstuff.
(05:06):
And by the time I woke up in themorning and we had cleared a
little over 20 grand in profit.
Um, and I was like, oh my God,like you can have an idea?
And, um, the user base isinfinite.
And the silly thing was, uh, Ikept, I kept looking at the
number of people that it saidwas my audience size and I
(05:29):
thought that it just can't beright.
There has to be more than that.
And so I spent a couple hoursand this is the next day and did
okay, everybody with the nameSchmidt in Maine, everybody with
the name Schmidt in Maine,everybody with the name Schmidt
in Vermont, everybody, and I didevery single state, and I ended
up having about 30 times largeraudience.
(05:52):
And, uh, so I launched it againand we 10xed the result.
So I had made about a hundredgrand on that shirt in less than
48 hours, 50 hours and I waslike okay, I can make a living
online.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
That's awesome.
That is awesome and talk aboutknowing your target audience and
having a very specific avatar.
That's a great story.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Then I actually even did like little onesies and put,
like I'm a little Schmidt, sothere was just like all kinds of
stuff, so we played off of that, created a whole page around it
and that that shirt went on tosell just an enormous amount.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
That's awesome.
I love that story so well.
Really looking forward togetting into today's podcast.
Now, one thing that moste-commerce sellers deal with as
they're getting into e-commerceis they ask themselves the
question where do I sell?
Do I go to Etsy, do I go toShopify?
Do I build my own website?
And so my question to you ishow has the evolving landscape
(06:57):
of third-party sellersinfluenced your strategies at
Build Grow Scale and I would say, when I refer to third-party
sellers, let's talk to Amazonsellers is that is probably the
largest population of people.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah for sure.
In fact, a lot of people allthe time when I tell them I'm in
e-commerce, that's one of thevery first things they say oh,
amazon.
And I actually say, no, wedon't deal with the Amazon.
And the reason why was when Ifirst, when we first started BGS
, my business partner had Amazonlistings and he had done really
(07:29):
well with it, but he had alsogot burned.
Where they went, they sent hima notice and said, hey, you have
to tell us who your supplier is, how much you're paying all
this other stuff, becausesomeone said that this is
fraudulent.
And then within two weeks, theyhad went to his supplier and
gave them a contract for twoyears worth of sales, white
(07:50):
label that took it and he lost,you know, hundreds of thousands
of dollars.
It was a couple hundredthousand dollars a year product.
And so we just always said,like we're going to, if we're
going to build a business aroundsomething, we're going to own
the data, we're going to knowthe customers and uh, so we
focused on Shopify and just toto tie in the story from where
(08:14):
we started to where I am now,because I think it matters.
I got really good at Facebookads and that's why I got into
e-commerce.
I thought a different way aboutsales, and I think it had to do
with me being in the brick andmortar world and then coming
(08:35):
online.
And so what I realized was sad,or sales ads were very, um,
volatile.
Um, you could have great weeksand then you could have really
crappy weeks and then, like whenthey were redoing the algorithm
before the fourth quarter, youknow, black Friday, cyber Monday
, all that everything would dropoff a cliff.
(08:56):
And so I was super frustrated.
And we had a, we had a kitchensupply site at the time, and so
I started looking into the data.
I I saw an ad online.
Um, a guy said hey, um, I'll dosix calls with you for a
thousand dollars and teach youGoogle analytics, and there's a
(09:16):
whole bunch of data in therethat you can use, um to make
more sales.
Um, after the very first call,I was like, oh my goodness, like
this, this is going to be cool.
And I just went headfirst deepdive into the analytics part of
it and that made my ads work way, way better.
(09:37):
And that's really how BGS wasbirthed.
Before that, we were teachingfunnels and sales pages and
stuff like that.
But when we realized that whenyou can use the data, start
being predictable and see whatpeople are doing and make the
user experience better, oursales were just exponentially
(09:58):
better.
And we tried that with a coupleof my other friends who had
sold t-shirts with um.
In the end, um, in that threeyear period, we ended up selling
about 15 million.
I sold about $15 million forthe t-shirts.
And uh, so I reached out to acouple of friends who had
Shopify sites and said hey, Ithink, um, I'm onto something I
(10:18):
would love to like work on yoursite.
If it works, you can pay me, ifit doesn't work, obviously, you
don't have to pay me.
And uh, we took.
The very first site that Iworked on was Organifi.
Um.
They had done 2.75 million theyear before I helped them and in
90 days I had them on a runrate of over 9 million Um.
(10:40):
They ended up doing 16 millionthe first 12 months that I
worked with them.
So almost a seven X um ended uphaving about 50,000 members on
continuity.
I mean it was a huge success.
The second one I helped, uh,they were doing about 300 grand
a month.
They thought they were reallyawesome and that is an awesome
(11:01):
number.
I'm not knocking it Um, butwithin six months we had them at
2.7 million a month.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
And I was like, okay, lightning, lightning didn't
just strike me and I got lucky.
This actually works.
And that's really what spawnedus going into that and and,
honestly, I haven't run Facebookads now in eight, nine years.
I just I don't even have a cluehow to do it.
Because I said I'm going tofigure out the data, everybody
(11:29):
else is teaching Facebook adsand you got to do all this other
stuff.
But the site doesn't work.
And I was like, when I startedlooking at my own site, I said
traffic's not really the problem.
Everybody thinks they need moretraffic, but the average
e-commerce website convertsaround 2%.
And so I'm like, okay, ahundred people came, 98 people
(11:52):
left.
They want to get a hundred morepeople for two more sales.
I'm thinking, why don't I gettwo more of those 98 that left
and I'll double my business onthe same ad spend.
And that was kind of whatstarted the foray into data and
using data to actually run thebusiness.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
I love that perspective and the thought
about running traffic, trafficnot being the problem.
I think that's something youknow.
I personally I've got thatwrong not being the problem.
I think that's something youknow.
I personally I've got thatwrong where it seems like you
kind of get hooked on, you know,trying to get those two out of
(12:35):
100 sales, and so when you lookat a site and you're trying to
get it from, say, twoconversions to four conversions,
what would be some types ofoptimizations that you would
look to to to make that jump?
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yeah, so I'm going to um I'll share several um as we
go through this, but I again Iwant to tie it back to your
Amazon sellers.
Uh, because, uh, Amazon, theirconversion rate is much, much,
much higher, Like peopleliterally go there to buy, and
so I think it's somewhere in the70% range.
(13:10):
It's extremely high.
And so I always thought like,okay, let's look at their site,
see what they're doing thatworks, and then try those things
over here and see what we cangarner from it.
And not everything worked atall.
There was a few things did.
(13:31):
One reviews.
Reviews are huge, Doesn'tmatter if it's on Amazon or if
it's on your website and theyhad released a study saying that
once your product gets to 200reviews, it can literally cut
your conversion in half.
So if it took 10 visitors toget a sale with 200 reviews, now
(13:55):
all of a sudden it's only gonnatake five, and so like a much,
much better conversion rate.
And so we started applying thatto the website, making the
reviews front and center.
We actually even borrowed thecredibility of the Amazon yellow
, because everyone knows thatand it's a psychological trigger
of trust, and so we changed allthe reviews on all of our sites
(14:19):
to that.
Amazon yellow made sure that ifthey didn't have 200, we took a
combined site reviews and putthe bigger number on every
product until they startedgetting enough, and we saw huge
advances from that.
Another one was and this is adamaging emission we used to
(14:42):
think that if you didn't havevery many products, you didn't
need search, because they'regoing to be able to see what you
have.
You know you need to have likeeight, 10 products or more,
Otherwise search isn't a bigdeal.
What we found out is search isa really big deal because people
don't just type in what productthey're looking for, they
(15:02):
actually type in their problem.
And so when we started trackingthat, we started seeing what
people were typing in and whatproducts got typed in the most.
And a good example was one ofour clients, Cubcoats, and they
don't mind if you tell the story.
Their top two search terms werefor products that they didn't
(15:26):
have.
It was a unicorn, and thenunicorn spelled wrong.
Well, they had all theseproducts that are like a stuffed
animal that you unzip it, itturns into a hoodie for a little
kid.
Well, all the kids wantedunicorns and they didn't know
that.
But when we tracked it in thesearch.
We saw that.
So they created a unicorn andthen they released it on Amazon
(15:46):
Prime Day and they did a half amillion dollars in 24 hours.
So we would have never known,had no idea, if we weren't
tracking what was happening inthe search.
The other thing that we'verealized over time is in search
on your e-commerce site, thattraffic converts twice as high
as your normal site traffic andits value is almost four times
(16:10):
the average visitor.
And so you know we had to tryto, we have to try to determine
why that is, and we think, justif someone can find what they're
looking for, easy navigation toit, they tend to buy more, and
so that again we're like, okay,how do we make navigation easier
(16:30):
?
And that started.
Okay, the homepage is no longermeant to sell.
It's only purpose is to buildtrust and then easy navigation
to what we're looking for, andwhen we did that, conversions
went up, and so I would saythat's a really big one.
Reviews and search traffic.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Very nice, very nice.
I love that you looked atAmazon as an example, because
they certainly have split testedit a lot and those stars being
social proof.
I think that is one of the bigdifferentiators between
e-commerce and brick and mortarIs you get to hear the opinions
(17:10):
of people that bought that exactproduct and you know, you can
see what they like, what theydon't like, and so I really
really like that.
And the search bar is anotherone that I viewing that as a
spot to get information fromyour customers.
You know, if it was brick andmortar, somebody would come in
(17:32):
and say do you have a unicornhoodie?
That's essentially the searchbar right, and framing it that
way, I think is really reallyinteresting, really interesting.
So one of the things as I haveprepped for this episode is, in
my inner accountant loves thisis that you make data-driven
decisions.
You let data really guide theway and with your pool of
(17:57):
clients at Build, grow Scale,you have access to a ton of data
, and so how does your team kindof collate that data and then
how are they making data-drivendecisions that benefits the
group of clients you serve?
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, so we actually call them revenue optimizers.
We coined our own term becauseso many people use CRO.
And the funny thing is, whenthey would come to us, they
would go oh, I want to increasemy conversion rate.
I want to increase myconversion rate.
And I'm like, well, we want todo that, of course, but there's
(18:37):
good ways to do that and poorways to do that.
Like, we can put all yourproducts on sale and your
conversion rate will go up, butyou're going to do a bunch more
work for not a lot more money.
And so we look at the site veryholistic and the data that
we're looking at is how do weget the user to take the next
(18:58):
action?
And so, instead of looking at awhole site and going, okay, we
want to make more sales, webroke it down even farther and
said if they land on thehomepage, what is the best way
to get them to go to a filterpage?
And if they land on the filterpage, we know that if they use
filters on the side, you can getas much as a three to 500%
(19:22):
increase in conversions of thepeople that use the filters over
the people that are scrolling.
And so how do we get them touse the filters, then on the
product page, how do we get themto add to cart?
And there's so many differentelements in all of that and
there's so many differentelements in all of that.
We just got very, very granularand we've used all that data,
(19:44):
hundreds of millions.
I mean we're probably close toa billion dollars.
I've stopped saying it after400 million because it's like
okay, if I say 400 million or600 or 800 million, like nobody
actually even translates what400 million means and so that's
just an ego number at some point.
But there's a lot of data andso we've done that with every
(20:08):
page and had lots and lots ofsplit tests and I'll actually
share, just because, like yousaid, the inner account and the
data.
This is another damage to themission and a really, really
eye-opening test for us.
We used to test something on apage and then when it would win,
(20:28):
we would go look for somethingelse to try to test and win, and
that's logical.
But one of our ROs said noteverybody goes through the page
the same way.
What if we put that winningelement in another place on the
page?
And we tried it and the pageincreased and so we tried it in
(20:49):
another spot and the pageincreased again.
And on the fourth try it waskind of like a diminishing
return, but we literallyincreased almost 50% more by
adding that winning element inother places on the page,
because not everybody goesthrough the exact same way, and
so then it was amazing how muchbigger our wins were when we
(21:13):
learned okay, success leavesclues.
Let's try that in a couple ofdifferent ways on a couple of
different pages, and many, manytimes we would get more and more
lifts from doing that.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Very nice, very nice.
Yeah, I love the data-drivendecisions and for listeners of
the show it's probably familiarwith me talking about.
I try to leave my opinion out.
If I can let data drive thedecision, that will lead to the
best outcome, and so I really,really like that.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
We do too, because we do this well.
Now it's been almost 10 yearsand this is all that we do is
just use data to make thesedecisions, and I'll tell you,
probably 50% of the tests thatwe run don't win, and that's
using data and making our bestguesses.
So I don't even understand whatthe odds would be for someone
(22:10):
to actually get wins, and Irealize that's probably why most
site owners have never tested,actually tested anything.
They just go, oh, this site'sdoing that.
I'm going to do that too, andwe tried that in the beginning,
and what we realized is a lot ofthese really big sites.
They own the traffic and sotheir traffic actually interacts
(22:32):
with their page, different thansomeone who's buying cold
traffic or interruptionmarketing.
Getting people to come to thatand that matters.
The context and the frame ofmind that they come to your site
with is different.
So the people that I'm goingback to we weave this back to
one of your original questionswith the Amazon sellers.
(22:52):
A lot of them come to us andthey try to mimic a lot of what
was on Amazon.
Well, we've already done that.
We know what works, whatdoesn't work, and we can help
your Shopify site do really welland then you can actually even
do fulfillment through that,where you get a lot of the data.
So the people who have come tous and optimize their Shopify
(23:14):
site or built their Shopify siteto be another channel has
worked really well.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Very good, Very good, that makes a lot of sense.
So next question I'd like totalk about is a trend going on,
and that is with mobile.
There's a lot of people I don'tknow what the stat is, maybe
you do but the trend of peopleshopping on their phones instead
(23:41):
of desktop has significantlyincreased over the next couple
of years, or over the lastcouple of years.
What are some ways thatentrepreneurs, as they're
looking at their site, what aresome things they should be
thinking about to ensure thatthey are optimized for mobile?
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Yeah, I would say the very first thing that they
should focus on is mobile, Ahundred percent.
You know, five, six years ago,when we first started, desktop
was higher and mobile was kindof catching up.
Now mobile is like 87 to 90% ofyour traffic and desktop's 10.
Traffic and desktops 10.
(24:21):
Depending on the product, thereis ones that require more
education and more real estateto sell, Cause we have some
clients have three $4,000products and so most people
aren't spending that much moneyon a phone.
They might discover it on thephone and then we retarget them
back to desktop.
So there's actually a littlenugget right there that people
can use If they find you on thephone.
(24:43):
Run a retargeting ad that takespeople back to your desktop
version of your site.
That ad will be very profitable.
We've never not seen it be veryprofitable because your desktop
experience will convert abouttwice as high as your mobile
experience, even when they'reboth highly optimized.
We've never been able.
(25:03):
In fact, we use that kind of asa rule of thumb to see if
something's broke on one or theother, and we consider a tablet
the same as desktop because youhave more real estate.
So you have mobile and then youhave desktop and tablet, and
the desktop and tablet shouldalways convert twice as high as
mobile.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Uh, no, that's.
That's really interesting, andso you know what what you're
saying is.
People are doing a lot ofresearching on their phone, but
when it's time to get the walletout, when it's time to spend
the money they are they are in.
The higher the ticket item, themore likely this is is they're
going to desktop or tablet.
Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.
(25:43):
Very, very interesting.
That's something that I havenot heard in over 250 podcasts,
but it makes complete sense andI'm thinking of some of the big
purchases that I've made and itdoes.
It starts on social media,maybe a YouTube video on the
phone, but when it's purchasetime, I do go to desktop.
(26:04):
So that, anecdotally, alsomakes sense.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Yeah, yeah, and you have a lot more real estate
there to make your pitch to theclient.
I always tell everybody yourwebsite, whether it's on mobile
or desktop.
That's your conversation withyour client, and so wherever you
can be the most conversationalor whoever in your market is the
most conversational has thebest conversation they're going
(26:27):
to make the most sales anddominate the market, and that's
why I think people that runmedia are our best referral
partners.
When the site works better,their ads work better, the
people buy more, they can scale,and hence the name build, grow
and scale.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
I want to recap what you just said.
So your number one referralsource is people that are buying
media buyers.
Yeah, yeah, that's interestingbecause, yeah, yeah, that's
interesting because they, whenyou guys run your revenue
optimization, they shine.
(27:07):
That's neat, that's really neat.
I think that's really neat.
I, you know, prior to thisinterview, would have thought of
of you guys as kind ofcompetitors and and knowing now
that it's really the opposite isreally really interesting.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, we don't, and we don't run media.
Obviously, because we optimizesites, people go, oh well, can
you do this and can you do that.
And in the beginning we did itand what we realized was
e-commerce was growing at such apace that it really required
specialists in each area.
It really required specialistsin each area, and for us to
(27:38):
really be what we wanted, wewanted to be world-class at
optimization and the userexperience on the website.
In order to do that, it justrequired focus, and so the more
things that we said no to, thebetter we got and the better
referrals we got too.
And so over time, we just yeah,we literally have said no to
(28:00):
everything other than whensomeone lands on your website or
your landing page or your salesfunnel, from there until they
give you money.
That's our, that's our focusand that's our job.
And you know we usepsychological triggers.
Psychological triggers, in fact, I would say that's probably
(28:22):
one thing that differentiated usfrom the very beginning is I
read a lot of books about thatstuff and I would read I'll just
give you an example ofoptimization Everybody on the
podcast can use this.
It's very simple.
It's the form field text.
So the text that's in your formfields.
99 out of 100 websites saysemail Enter your email.
(28:45):
Well, I was reading RobertChiodini's book and he was
talking about people don't mindgiving you information if you
give them a reason why.
And they used an example ofcutting in line.
You could ask someone if youcut in line and 80% of people
say no, 20% of people will letyou.
But if you say, hey, do youmind if I cut in line?
(29:06):
My kids are going to be latefor school that giving them a
reason.
Even if it wasn't true orwhatever, like they didn't have
to check up on it, 80% of peoplenow said yes and get in.
Let them do that.
I thought, oh, that'sinteresting.
So we're asking for the emailand we were tracking form field
errors and they were always hugeat email and phone number.
(29:26):
And uh, and I think it just was, people didn't trust you know,
um, giving out their their goodinformation and so started
testing form field language andthe one that we came on that
made a.
It was a 279% reduction inerrors like astronomical.
(29:48):
Was email required for orderconfirmation?
Well, the order confirmationemail is opened 85% of the time.
It's the number one most openedemail in e-commerce.
People want to.
They look at their orderconfirmation, make sure
everything's right.
So when we said email requiredfor order confirmation, we
(30:09):
stopped getting errors, likeliterally 300, almost 300% less
errors.
The other thing that we realizedis our abandoned cart revenue
went way up.
Well, why was that?
Because now we had their verybest email and we were actually
they were seeing those emailsinstead of it going to some
off-brand email.
And so then and this is stillbefore SMS was huge.
(30:33):
Now SMS is the number one wayto.
It's the number one largestrevenue source um for recovery,
um and uh.
So under phone, we put phonerequired for shipping
notification.
Everybody wants to know whenyour product ships and so by
doing that um, we've had as muchas a 17% lift on checkouts, um
(30:59):
for digital products on a sitethat was doing $60 million a
year.
So that we've never, ever seen,we've never, ever implemented
that and not seen it giving thema lift.
And so everybody can do that.
Just put in there required fororder confirmation, required for
shipping notification, andthat's all you have to change
(31:19):
and you'll make more sales, moremoney.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
I love that.
I love that, and at thebeginning of the podcast we were
talking about, you know goingfrom two out of 100 to four out
of 100.
And as you walk through theseexamples, you know adding the
reviews, adding the search bar,adding that type of language.
You know, can I cut in line?
My kids are late to school.
That equivalent on a website isyou can, you can see how you
(31:45):
can make that jump from two tofour and and how your traffic,
you know, becomes much morevaluable and so I love that.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
I'll give you one more, just because your audience
is Amazon driven and I got thisfrom Jay Abraham he actually
talked about using the languagethat your customers use, and a
lot of times when you'rebuilding your website, you don't
have all those reviews, youdon't have the language that
(32:15):
they use a lot of times.
And so what he did is, he said,go over to Amazon, find your
competitors or similar productsand read all of their reviews.
Use those reviews as how tomake your product descriptions.
And so we started doing thatand we started using the review
language from competitorproducts on Amazon, where they'd
(32:37):
have a thousand reviews.
We'd read 200 of them and thenliterally create our product
description off of what peopleloved, and they loved it so much
that they went back and left areview.
We use that to do our productdescriptions on our Shopify
sites and again we saw, you knowa significant increase.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Again, we saw a significant increase and the
ability to do that.
That's free.
If you want to go readcompetitive reviews, that's free
.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
And use your customer's language.
Use your client's language,they will resonate.
It will just feel better tothem and they don't even know
why.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
That's interesting.
You read a lot of one-starreviews that say the eggs stick
to this pan.
And now, when you're on yourwebsite, you're going to
highlight the non-stick youreggs won't stick to this pan.
I really like that.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Another really, really interesting.
The counterintuitive thoughtthat we've realized and done a
lot of data on is one and twostar reviews do not actually
hurt your sales.
In fact, two stars and less arethe most clicked on reviews and
they are also the highestconverting spot on your website.
(33:54):
That's really interesting, thatis really the only time that you
see that is when the person hasresponded to it and taking care
of the problem.
When they don't take care ofthe problem, you don't get a
lift.
So, people, you know and I puta lot of thought into this why
is that?
True, people do not expect youto be perfect.
(34:17):
What they do expect you to dois when you have a problem, you
take care of it.
So when you push the ones thatare less than perfect, they go
oh, these guys are truthful andnow I can see how they take care
of their problems.
I trust them.
The people that only havefive-star reviews and no poor
ones people are like oh, they'relying, so automatically there's
(34:40):
an inherent.
I don't know if I'm going toget a good thing, I don't know
if it's true or not, but thepeople that are willing to share
the stuff that's not perfect um, like early on in the podcast I
said this is a damagingadmission.
You know, we're awesome atoptimizing a website.
We would jump from optimizationoptimization option, but when
we realized that, like, successleaves clues and we would put
(35:02):
that in another spot on the pageand you go, oh, okay, well,
they actually learned somethingand got better at it and they
shared how they didn't do goodpeople.
They will like that more andtrust you more and want to do
business with you.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
That's really, really interesting, and I can think of
some shopping experiences I'vehad where I've went in and it
has been all five-star and I'vewondered huh, this seems there's
something fishy here, and sothat's really really interesting
.
So last question before we getinto the fire round, talk about
(35:39):
Build Grow Scale what type ofclients do you serve?
And a follow-on question I haveis, as I was prepping for this
podcast, I had listened toanother podcast that you were on
and someone had mentioned thatyou tend to turn down more
candidates for coming into Buildgrow scale as clients than you
(36:00):
accept, and so can you talkabout that a little bit more?
Speaker 3 (36:03):
Yeah, um, I would say so.
We have a couple of differentways that you can do business
with us.
Um, one, um, we have all kindsof free information on a YouTube
channel, our blog, et cetera,and, um, the point of that is,
hey, we'll provide value whenyour site starts doing better
than you can choose to dobusiness with us if you want to,
(36:23):
and if not, you know, awesome,like you got some value from us,
you'll tell other people, andso that's one way.
Another way is we have peoplethat they can engage with us,
where we put the entire team onthe site, do all their
optimizations, their dev work,et cetera, and so we have a
(36:44):
couple of programs where you canwork with us for eight weeks.
We have a membership that youcan join where we teach all the
time and actually interact withthe members on a weekly basis on
there's three different callsper week, so you can join the
membership.
That's like $67 a month.
And then there's also whenyou're doing about $250,000 a
(37:09):
month or more in revenue.
That's when we have a what'scalled an amplified partnership,
where we would actually do allyour split testing, your Google
Analytics and take care ofeverything on the website so
that you can focus on traffic,sourcing, customer service, and
those are the examples that Igave you early on, where we took
(37:31):
Organifi from $2.75 million to$9 million and then to $16
million within a year, and thenthe 300,000 to 2.7 million.
Those are examples of differentones that we've done.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Outstanding, outstanding.
That's good to hear and it'sgood to hear that there's
different ways to engage withBuild Grow Scale.
That learning the learningcomponent that you had talked
about is, I think, great forpeople just getting started and
you know some of the storiesthat you've told today and the
work that you've done with yourAmplified clients.
(38:06):
You know again, my inneraccount is flaring up here.
But the return on investment asan entrepreneur, that's what
you want.
You're seeking return oninvestment.
My dollars are soldiers, I'msending them out into the world
and I want, you're seekingreturn on investment.
I, my dollars, are soldiers,I'm sending them out into the
world and I want them to comeback with more soldiers.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
And what you're saying about us turning down
some too.
Uh, we've gotten to the pointnow and we've been out there and
we've done this long enough uh,that we can be a little bit
picky, like, I love coming towork, I love doing what we do,
but there's been times that wesaid yes to certain clients that
we just didn't really enjoyworking for, or we use the data
(38:45):
and said, hey, this is what'sgoing to make the most sales and
like, ah, that's not on, and weget paid based off of winning,
and so if you're not going touse the data to do that, it's
really difficult for us to feellike we're going to and who we
(39:07):
say no to and who we refer toother people, just for that
simple fact of you.
Know, we want you to loveworking with us and we want to
love working with you.
(39:27):
That's where we get the bestresults and, yeah, that's just
how we run the business.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Very nice, very nice.
Now, if people are interestedin working with Build Grow Scale
, what would be the best way?
Speaker 3 (39:40):
I mean, go right to our website at
buildgrowthscalecom and contactus and there's a form that you
can fill out.
There's a couple of differentones for different levels of
engagement.
That's super easy.
Or you could actually email meto matt at buildgrowth dot com
and I respond to those emails.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Very nice.
We'll post links to all that inthe show notes Now.
Prior to hitting record on thepodcast, you had mentioned a
really sweet offer for our fourfiring the band listeners, so
can you talk about that?
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Yeah, so we, we have an offer that's normally fifteen
hundred bucks.
It's called the audit andthat's where we'll go through
your entire site and we'll breakdown, you know, the use of the
homepage, the filter page, theproduct page, cart, and then
literally show you the thingsthat we think are asked
questions about, the things thatwe think are unclear, and it's
(40:34):
really, really eyeopening forpeople.
Easy, easy to ROI on.
It takes us about 24 hours toturn around one and we normally
charge $1,500.
For your guests, we would dothat for $500.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Outstanding, outstanding.
Well, matthew, we reallyappreciate that offer and Firing
Demand listeners, this is goingto be a podcast I'm going to
re-listen to.
There's a lot of nuggets here,uh, of great information and, uh
, matthew, this has been anoutstanding podcast.
Now, before we end the show,there is something four
(41:10):
questions we ask all of ourguests.
It's called the fire round.
Are you ready?
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Sure, I don't remember these, but yeah, let's
go All right, sounds good.
So first question what is yourfavorite book, boy?
That's difficult because I likea few.
I will tell you, and I thinkyou and I have talked about
(41:38):
maybe doing another podcastaround this.
Over the last four or fiveyears I've been on a on a deep
spiritual journey, and so I willtell you.
Uh, there's two books that uh, Ireally really like, um, that
were very, very eyeopening forme.
One was called letting go andthe other one is called dark
side of the light chasers, whichis a really weird name, but
(41:58):
essentially what it is islearning how to accept all parts
of yourself as you know who youare.
And so, yeah, those two books,I would say, made a huge
difference.
One and just how I show up inlife.
And the funny thing is thatreally actually affects how we
do business too.
And so a lot of times peoplewill be like, oh no, I want the
(42:22):
tactics, I want the this or thatand, believe it or not, the
more work that we do on the sixinches between our ears affects
our business a lot more than thetactics do.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Absolutely, and there is going to be a second part to
this podcast and we're going todive deep into that.
So listeners stay tuned.
Second fire round question whatare your hobbies?
Speaker 3 (43:02):
did a half Ironman twice.
Um, I love exercise.
I think that, uh, you know, onetaking care of our body gives
us a better quality of life,because that's how we experience
everything.
Um, so I was yeah, I'd sayexercise cycling, and I like to
play tennis.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Very nice, very nice.
What is one thing you do notmiss about working for the man?
Speaker 3 (43:19):
What is one thing you do not miss about working for
the man?
Well, the very last time that Iworked for someone, I asked for
vacation time and I was thenumber one salesman and they
said no and I thought, oh okay.
And I, literally about an hourand a half later, about 90
(43:42):
minutes later, I went in andgave them my two weeks notice
and they're like what do youmean?
Yeah, I just realized like I'mnot going to show up and be your
number one employee and when Ineed something that you're not
willing to provide that for me.
So, yeah, just that I, yeah, Iwant to be able to control my
own destiny.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Very nice.
And final question what do youthink sets apart successful
entrepreneurs from those whogive up, fail or never get
started?
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Hmm, well, I will tell you another thing that I've
learned and it's changed mysuccess trajectory is I used to
think I was really smart and ahard worker, and I had a really,
(44:37):
really intelligent person saywhat if you weren't smart, what
does that do for you?
And I was like, oh wow, thatgives you a lot more
open-mindedness, openpossibilities for other areas
that you could do better in, andso I would say, go into things
with the child's eyes, becurious instead of thinking that
you know the answer.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Very nice.
I really like that answer,Matthew.
This has been an outstandingpodcast.
I want to thank you for yourtime today.
If people are interested ingetting in touch with you,
what's the best way?
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Yeah, matt, at buildandgrowthscalecom works.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
All right, sounds good.
Well, thank you everyone fortuning in to the Firing the man
podcast and we'll see you nextweek.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!