How to Convince Customers to Buy From You Instead of Your Competition

welcome to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson a show that brings you regular interviews tips and tools for building
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well hello and welcome to the ecommerce podcast with me your host matt edmondson
this is a show all about how to grow your online business and every week i get to talk to amazing people
from the world of e-commerce and i get to ask them all kinds of questions
you know about all kinds of topics about what they know and how it's going to help us develop our own online business and in
today's show we get to look at how to convince your
customers to buy from you instead of your competition that's right oh yes
what can you do to stand out to increase your conversion and increase your customer satisfaction
rate that's what i'm getting into with today's special guest beaming in all the way from los angeles
to the sunny uk where i'm recording right now jessica start that sentence again
jessica totillo is an e-commerce strategy expert and she will be sharing her tips
tricks and strategies to get more sales than your competitors oh yes you are not going to want to miss
this show you can grab your notebooks take notes but of course all of the notes from
today's show will be available as a free download on our website so just head on over
to ecommercepodcast.net to download them and this is episode
so if you go to ecommercepodcast.net slash you will go straight to this
uh this podcast the blog post on the site you know what we have a
brand new domain name ecommercepodcast.net we thought that might be easier so if you're thinking to yourself
matt i listen to this show that's the first time i've heard of that web url well you wouldn't be wrong
because it's the first time i've mentioned it ecommerce ecommercepodcast.net now before
we get into the show with jessica which i'm really looking forward to because we had a great pre-call
let's just hear from one of our fab friends chloe and then we'll be back with jessica hi
i'm chloe thomas host of the brand new keep optimizing marketing podcast three reasons to tune in and have a
listen number one each month we focus on a different marketing method a whole month one marketing method two each wednesday
we put live a new audio episode with an expert on that marketing method
number three at the end of each month we get all our experts together to do a live webinar where you can ask them your
questions uh make sure you check out chloe's podcast because you know what it is
going to be great and fab i've actually been a guest on that show that's not what makes it good and fab it's just good and fab
because chloe does it so if you're in e-commerce you're definitely going to want to check that out now without
further ado that's enough from me let's bring on uh jessica onto the show now we are also
trying to note some new software so do forgive us if we uh if we kind of mess this up but
if i press this button jessica will appear jessica hi good evening how are you doing oh i'm so
well thank you so much for having me matt super excited to chat with you about all this oh no it's great you could join us
thanks for joining us now i was reading uh your you know your bio and i'm thinking actually i didn't
ask before we started recording you are in la right i did get that bit right yes yes you did okay it's good i was like
wow okay because at the time of recording it's like p.m here so what's the time for
you it's noon our time oh wow so it's eight hours difference goodness so you're having lunch and i've had my
dinner already and getting ready for bed okay that's just the way the world works at the moment so thanks for being on the
show my pleasure time zones are weird i still don't totally get them
you know what i remember i've i've only ever done it once i flew around the world once i went from london
to singapore to new zealand from new zealand san francisco then to chicago then to new york via
north carolina and back home so i literally went around the world and you actually through certain time zones you you land before you take off
which i it's bizarre so bizarre
it really really is so jessica right it says here in the bio
that you are an e-commerce strategy expert and i love your title right so you're an e-commerce strategist
and clavio ninja right now people watching the video can see your job title
uh why clavio ninja why that so i i've been in retail e-commerce for
a long time and i've worked with a lot of email marketing platforms
and in my previous day job we were on this platform we didn't like it we were on a contract
we needed to move to something else and we were about to go with clavio and
then this new shiny object popped up right and so like everyone does this happens in
corporate companies it happens in small businesses you see the shiny object you're like i want that
okay so we got it right it was black friday
and none of my emails triggered that i had scheduled ahead of me no on black friday
yes it was very stressful and i was the only employee of this multi-seven figure
e-commerce business at the time and it was very stressful moment so i
was like well we're not going to use this platform i'm just going to go back to clavio
and i onboarded onto clavio in three days with you know plus email
subscribers recreated all of my flows got all of my
holiday campaigns set up and it was a very long three days but i
did it and for me because i was an email marketer
the fact that i was able to do that on klavio a platform i had never used but
it was that easy i instantly fell in love yeah and our revenue and our kpis and email
were just shot up through the roof so i dug really deep into clavio
and really just fell in love with it so it's the first thing i recommend to people and you know i work with a lot of
smaller entrepreneurs who get overwhelmed by the tech and so that was really the hole
in the market that i started to fill wow okay well i mean that's a very good testimonial for clavio i mean the fact
that you can do that in three days be up and running and it's it's better than it was before mind you
if the system you're using before is not actually sending out emails anything anything would be better right
yes oh my gosh that was a crazy it was a very unfortunate it's really you know when you have to go
and tell your boss when he's like uh why am i not seeing as many sales come through as you expect
and it's like well because none of our emails got sent out wow that's who wants to be
the one to deliver that news [Laughter]
no no so unfortunately you've not had to do that again since right
nope no problems anymore well that's interesting i mean clavio's not the thing necessarily on our build to talk
about but i'm fascinated to ask you about that because actually we don't really talk too much about ecommerce platforms we've used um activecampaign we still
use activecampaign we've used purewe've used a whole bunch of different ones over the years clavio is the one platform i've heard a
lot about but never actually used some of my clients use it with good results um have you used activecampaign can you
compare it to clavio i'm curious so i have dabbled in active campaign a
little bit i will say and maybe it's just me and the way my brain works but i get completely
overwhelmed with the way they tag people and how you use tags to sort
and trigger and things whereas in clavio it's you
basically have your main list that everybody goes to and then everything else is just a
segment and that's it and there's a lot of ways you can build those segments so
for me i just find it easier to wrap my head around
and think through logic in clavio very good okay and so if anyone is out
there and they're thinking of trying a different e-commerce platform definitely give clavio a go uh because i i'd imagine they do like a
free trial or like a small trial type thing that you can have a go at and of course if they need coaching reach out and talk to jessica
because yep she's a ninja in the whole thing right so ninjas are awesome okay so
thanks you should have worn like a ninja mask joe that would have been oh
yes that's actually a really good idea i should do some like social media videos really playing up the ninja thing yeah
yeah yeah and putting that on the list yeah and go overboard and do all the sound effects and all that sort of thing
yeah yes i love that i think you should totally do it'd be
amazing just tag me in it when you do it i'd love to see it okay we are talking about how to
convince customers to buy from you instead of your competition and this is a favorite topic of yours
right we talked about this in our prequel why is this why is this something that you care
deeply about working with e-commerce entrepreneurs
what i've seen is they get really caught up in
themselves in the business right like oh i have this traffic but nobody's buying
or how do i get more traffic or so and so is doing this i need to do
that instead of asking what does your customer need what is important to them
what is going to make them buy so i approach it this way because
that's what people want the answer to but the truth underneath it is
really understanding your customer and what makes you special and what they're
going to connect with so it's a little tricky to be honest these things always are very nuanced yes
very very nuanced yes so what are some quick wins that we could have let's let's start at the top
what are some of the quick ways that we can increase conversion on our e-commerce websites
so i think the first thing that you can do and you have to kind of sit and think about your business a little
bit and determine what is it that makes you special and i think sometimes we think it has to
be this big grandiose thing right that something that nobody else has ever
done before and it really doesn't sometimes it's as simple as we have really great customer service and we are
here for you or whatever that is or you can catch us on live chat
or if depending upon your product if it's something very visual like jewelry hey you can get on a video chat
with us and we can help you pick out the right thing and sometimes it's just hey we ship
everything for free i like to use the story of zappos when they first started
nobody was selling shoes online people were not buying shoes online because fitting that is too difficult right
and they had no business and then they brought in a new ceo and he was like well you need
to have free shipping because people are afraid to buy shoes online and it was that thing that
changed their entire business and now they are who we know today so it doesn't have to be a huge
thing but what really matters to the customer when it comes to buying your product
that i think is such a crucial point because i'm going to go back to something you said earlier when you went to a
different company you were looking at the shiny thing and this is this is a you know people
have seen the title you know how to how to get you know sales on your how to beat your competition how did how to win that
yeah and you you instantly think oh what is it that i don't know do i mean what's the silver bullet
what's the magic thing here the magic formula i'm gonna use and i love it because you've just basically come out and said actually
it's going to be something very straightforward something very simple uh and it's going to matter deeply to
your customer dig in find out what that is and we're good to go is that what i've heard exactly that's
exactly it yeah this was a really short podcast [Laughter]
no no we need to get into this a little bit more so what are then some of these um so some of the fun
let's talk about the fundamentals i love talking about this let's get the fundamentals sorted out so you've given us an example
there with zappos and or zappos how do you pronounce that we don't have it anymore
um but um i've read his book delivering happiness uh the tony shades book which is just awe
inspiring a brilliant book um so they figured out free delivery uh because they understood it was from
their customers so what are some of the other things that we should do how do we figure out what's going to work for us yeah i've
we need to listen to what their the customer is saying to us so we already have a lot of the data that
we need it's just a matter of being aware and paying attention so what customer service emails are you
getting what are people saying in reviews what are they objecting to
and those are the specific things that you need to address and you know you can say like oh yeah
free shipping that's going to make everybody happy but i have actually in previous companies we
tested our free shipping threshold a lot and it literally made no difference like
there was no change in conversion so that wasn't important to them
so you have to figure out what is important to your customer for some people it's because it's small
batch and it's hand crafted and it's supporting a family and putting money on you know putting dinner on
their table what is it specifically for them and they're probably already telling you
so my favorite place like i said is to look at your customer service inquiries
and another way that you can think about this is how many customer service
inquiries you get is also a kpi to measure right because your team only
has so much time to sit down and email with these people or you only have so much time
so if you can change your messaging or put in some new
um unique selling proposition that addresses it and it means they don't have to email
you and ask you questions anymore and now you're spending less time talking to your customer
now you've lowered your expenses and now you're more profitable so if we need to tie it to money which
most of us do one yeah yeah that's another way you can kind of backtrack
through that so it really is look at the resources you already have
what are people saying to you on social media the content is there you just need to
read it and understand it that's brilliant so you can go through your customer service inquiries
your reviews and actually um i wouldn't leave it there you could also look at what people are writing on
the social media um of your competition can't you or people selling like similar products yeah yeah yeah one of
the things that i do quite often is i read through reviews on amazon of people if the products that we sell are on the amazon website
it's just a gold mine isn't it of information it absolutely is because they're already giving you
all of their grievances and what they don't like and now you know how you can do it better
as a consumer amazon reviews make me want to buy almost nothing i will say
that but as a marketer yes they are a gold
mine for sure yeah you look at them and go oh my goodness what an opportunity here i mean you said a minute ago um about
maybe you know if you're doing handmade stuff for it's one of the big things we're seeing in the uk at the moment um
we're in our second lockdown and there is a big deal about buying local from local businesses
it's a massive thing right um because nobody everyone's saying don't buy from amazon because i don't pay tax there's a big thing in the
uk about that now they may pay the tax i'm not saying one way or another i'm just saying that's what the newspapers report
um so you know don't consume me amazon but uh there is this thing about don't buy from
amazon buy local it is a big deal at the moment and to the point where actually uh we
are changing the messaging on our own e-commerce website so before we would tell you that we've shipped
you know gazillion products to this many different nations around the world now we're going to go on there and say
this is the team here's a photograph of the three of us all the four of us and actually we're just a small local business
um yeah and and and people are preferring that message much more now than than say a few years ago
but especially in the light of covet have you have you noticed that so i like i said i work with a lot
of smaller entrepreneurs and i tell them put as much of yourself into the
business as you are comfortable with ideally you should be getting on video and talking about your product and
showing your face but i understand not everyone wants to do that but it's so powerful because
people buy from people yeah that's so cool yep even if someone else
look unless you invented something that doesn't exist right there's someone else
out there who sells what you sell but nobody else is you so
and it there's always kind of been like that cult group of people who want to shop small
and shop local but you're right since the pandemic people's
you know it's really shifted even more so to that and i think it's it's less
culty and it's more normal now to want to support the small business it is and i think actually it's quite
wonderful i mean i am i love it so i definitely think it's wonderful right yeah but i i'm i'm definitely taking the
challenge what can i not buy from the big boys you know from amazon and the walmarts of this world and what can i buy from a
local business um and support them at this time because you know why not right this is what humanity does
it i think in times like this and so i think and i love that you know
there's so many sites selling the product that you're selling but only you are you know
you're what's different you're you're what's unique um so do you recommend then sites uh small
sites um build their site a bit more i mean i guess you've hinted at this a
little bit but build their site a bit more around them and who they are as well as the products that they sell
absolutely i think your own story especially if it started out of you know
you were solving a particular problem that's what i see most of the time right so you've got
a mom who is looking for she needs something to
help her kid right it doesn't exist that wasn't a good example i don't even have kids but it was the first thing that
came to mind that's why i couldn't come up with anything tangible so
she goes and she creates it right and that story is something that people can
relate to and they are going to see themselves in you and
one of the things that i've learned after many -plus years being in retail is
people don't read right so you they just don't
they don't read sale signs you know they're it's terrible but that just means that you
can't over communicate it that's another thing that i see happens a lot is you
have this great story but you don't share it enough because to you
you are sick of hearing it yeah and you think you've said it a million times but they
haven't heard it a million times so you cannot over communicate all of your usps whatever
they are free shipping your story right you just can't say it enough
that's a really important point and this is actually one of the things that i found quite um difficult from my own point of view
because you're you're right you're like i've said this there's a page on my website which talks about this and then
i kind of think to myself well you know only two percent of people are going to that web page
and out of the two percent go into that web page maybe one in a thousand people actually bother to read
everything between the headlines jeremy and it's that kind of right um and you're right you have to remind us to just constantly say the same
message over and over again and become a become your own brand evangelist kind of thing and tell your story in a
way that connects with people i think it's a winning formula um
we have this phrase i have this phrase we called um are you familiar with the story about david and goliath you know
the small lad who takes on the big giant with his and he wins kind of yeah it's
melvin gladwell wrote a book about it called david and goliath and it's about this young lad who um takes on a giant it's like how do
you take on the giants so we have this phrase called digital davids right how do you if you're a digital david if you're the
small guy how do you beat the big giants how do you beat the the the goliaths of this world
and it wasn't using the same tools david didn't beat goliath using the sword and the shield he beat him with a slingshot the story
tells us which was a tool he was used to using and i love what you're saying because actually this is what you do as a digital david
what is good for you what do you know what are you good at do that tell your story really well and
you'll you'll win right absolutely
and i tell people all the time you know as a small business
you are in a better position to be more nimble to pivot quicker
you don't have all the red man coming from corporate that is my background it took us forever to do something new
right because you got to get all these people to agree to it and it's just this whole big conversation
and and then by the time you get around to implementing it it's like not even the cool thing anymore
yeah but you yeah you as the small business you can react so quickly so if you're paying attention
and then you can pivot and reach that customer right where they're at that's something
the big guys cannot do they just can't no they they and they definitely can't create
that content the way that you can create it and they're they're the i guess they're
the supermarket aren't they they're the big guys it's on the shelf buy it or don't buy it we don't care but actually you're like the deli aren't
you the delicatessen you're going to go in there someone's going to know everything about that product and they're going to give you samples
and they're going to talk to you about that and you're going to become the most knowledgeable person about some obscure cheese are and you're gonna go
well i'm gonna try that and that's what you are isn't it online yes that is the best and i've never
heard that used as an analogy but it's amazing i'm going to use it i will give you feel free steal it all the way i'd like
to take credit but i'm sure i've heard it somewhere else but yes that is so true and that is the
experience that you can create as a smaller business i mean this is why big companies use
celebrities right because you connect with the celebrity so they're trying to
take advantage of that because they can't connect with you directly but how much more powerful
would it be if it's actually the person who sat down and made this product and created this product and you just
want to support them it's it's so powerful no it is totally
we've just um just tell a little story here we've just launched a new site
with a lady called joe jewett joanne dewitt now joe uh is a beautiful lady she's in her s
she won't mind telling her age because she wanted to do she had a she had a beautiful story
um about being and how when she was in her sort of s her makeup needs changed and she's from
the northeast of england and they they're a very particular way of how they talk in the northeast of
england it's very matter of fact very down to earth and very straight to the point and she would use all kinds of expressions basically to
say that she didn't look great and i i just found myself laughing every time she used a different analogy
and so she um actually in her day was the makeup artist to princess diana
bette midler barbra streisand madonna you could name any celebrity she's
probably done makeup for them right and um and so i was intrigued when i met her because she had this
methodology and she had a particular type of makeup which she liked and so like that i think would be a really
interesting website because you're not then just becoming another makeup site actually this site is about joe it's
about her methodology it's about her story it's about what she did for princess diana and it's about how you
in your s aren't going to look like the dog's dinner anymore because she's going to help you get your makeup right right and so um so yeah i and that
for me the thing that intrigued me about that the reason i got involved was because of her story yeah
yeah i'm even just listening to it i'm like okay i need to see more about this
because especially when it comes to you know beauty and stuff like that
is you don't want to see you know the year old with the
perfect skin it's like well yeah of course she looks like that because she's and she has perfect skin but like
i'm a little bit more weathered i'm you know i'm showing i'm showing some love
because i've lived a great life like and i want to connect with someone
who has been through that and who understands me you know we all just want to be understood and accepted
so if they can relate to you it's just going to attract them yeah no that's totally right that's
totally right so um one of the things
that uh i that came to my mind as you're talking one of the things that we pivoted really well on the jersey beauty
company i loved your analogy you can pivot quick and it took a long time in corporate i did i did i did a
coaching job with a a corporate company in new zealand i won't mention any names
but love them to bits and we're like let's you know try this idea it took six months for some team somewhere to
approve and you just like what it takes like literally six seconds in my head to go this is a good idea let's
try that right right really fascinating the difference between the two things anyway one of the
things that we did at jersey to pivot um which made a massive difference
was we understood that in jersey is a beauty company right so it sells skincare products and one of the things
that we were realizing very quickly is uh environmental issues eco
do you know i mean and that whole side of things beauty industry is not well known for that i'm not gonna lie
and so we stopped shipping out our products in the you know the plastic bubbles
uh the air pocket type things to keep your products up we're like yeah that's that's just not gonna work
for us it doesn't vibe with us as our values and it certainly doesn't connect with our clients and so we were racking our brains long
and hard what should we use instead of plastic bubbles right we could use the brown paper like amazon
but that's just brown boring paper we could use the wood shavings jeremy but then the client
has got to clean that up at the other end it looks pretty but they get hacked off with that really quickly we found that
out um and so you know what we settled on and this if i was to pinpoint one you know you
can look back over your website and go there were several points where things changed for us several
things that we did and this was one of them was just changing our packaging mature material and we used popcorn
like actual real popcorn yeah real popcorn i went out and bought a load of popcorn
machines we put them in the warehouse and we just started making popcorn and this was a crazy idea that i got
when i was at the cinema right because i'm like this stuff is organic it is
lightweight it's going to protect the products it is fun right because we just wanted to be being
a little bit different a bit quirky bit fun and because it's biodegradable it's totally environmentally friendly go and
feed it to the birds and so we started shipping our products in popcorn social media went nuts
everybody started taking pictures of their packaging because it came in popcorn
no one had ever taken a picture of the plastic bubbles unless it was to complain or whine and so um yeah as you were talking that
that story just popped into my head just the simple thing of changing the plastic bubble to popcorn made a massive
difference that's freaking brilliant i love that are you still doing that oh
yeah yeah yeah yeah no you totally are and people we we started getting letters and emails
you talk about reading customer service we started getting emails from people saying all that popcorn was delicious me and my grandson really enjoyed it
and we had to write them back going listen i'm not being funny there's a sticker on the on the packaging which says do not eat
this popcorn feed it to the birds do you mean because right this wasn't produced in what you'd call a food safe environment
right in a box for like three days at least uh since we've packed it in uv this is
not to eat while you're watching a movie love um but it created its own set of
problems but yeah i it made a massive difference yeah but see i love that because
now you're solving that problem right of environmentally friendly packaging
but you also created a moment for people to share and talk about and so now they're doing
the marketing for you um so that was brilliant good job love
it i don't think i ever would have thought of that now and again i i i think we thought of
it when we were just thinking laterally one day uh it took us a while to get there but we tried it
and you know what we had to try so many different types of corn to find the right corn
who knew who knew there were so many different types of popcorn but apparently there are i didn't know that i thought yeah one
type of popcorn but talk about like just social proof
and getting people talking about you that's amazing because that's one of the
other things you know that i would tell people to focus on in terms of standing out from the competition so
you really you managed to i don't want to say kill two birds with one stone because that's a terrible
saying but i don't know what else i don't know another version but you know what i mean we know what you mean
definitely yeah listen what i want to do now is um we're going to take a quick break and
we're going to be right back after the sponsors but i want to get into if it's okay with you i want to talk about how we can
practically then start to bring our own personality out onto the websites what are some of the things some of the other
steps that we need to take so it has been good so far uh let me bring on the sponsors and i'll be
right back let me give a big shout out to one of our show sponsors curious digital you
know what i love its flexibility it's such a great platform you know how when you start out you
might typically use an online platform because they're cheap they're easy to use super accessible but
you know what they aren't that flexible and as your business grows you end up moving to an agency right
because that's just what you do and at some point you're going to have this nightmare to deal with and it can be incredibly expensive
and the thing for me that i love about kd is it will grow with you you can start out on the
platform easily and as your business grows then kd will adapt with you now i don't
know of any other platform that does all of that so if you're in the market for a new e-commerce platform
make sure you follow the links from mattedmanson.com take advantage of the offers that
they've got for you and let me know what you think
okay good to be back with jessica and thanks again to our show sponsors curious digital do check out that
platform if you are looking for an e-commerce platform now jessica we were talking about uh how
to uh get people to buy from you rather than your competitors and we got into this amazing topic of
just you know doing the fundamentals doing something simple being you being more you on the website because people buy
from people right um and that's just let us down a whole series of conversations
uh yeah so i'm imagine there's somebody i know there's somebody listening to this show writing and going
matt this is great you're getting excited because you know you've got examples you've kind of you know you've got things you can
agree with that i'm just starting out in e-commerce right so um you're just starting out in e-commerce let's take any
particular product let's take beauty because it's what we know how do you how do you inject you more into that
business what are some of the steps that you would take yeah for sure so the first thing i would
say and i know some people are going to be like oh but i really don't want to do
this i'm still going to challenge you too is to get on video okay
video is so powerful and it's gonna grow that know like and
trust with your potential customers so much faster so you can do this in a
couple different ways one i think you can get on video on social media of course
but even on your own website if you have particular products like think about the
experience of buying makeup let's just use makeup as the example
you want to feel the formula if you're talking about an eye shadow you want to see how pigmented
it is right you want to try it out with different tools and kind of see is this better when i use my finger
do i need a brush like there's so much that goes into that create those videos and answer those
questions for the customer so if you can answer their objections before they even
have a chance to have them you're going to be so far ahead of the game yeah and
this could look like maybe it's on your actual product page maybe you have a library or
you have a blog kind of depends where you want to put it what's easier for you but i think
getting on video who okay watch home shopping shows
you ever watch those uh yeah yeah well not so much these days when i can't sleep yeah yeah yes
okay but we've all seen them we know you know what an infomercial looks like
the way they sell right that is how you sell in person and i
have quotes here if you're just listening to audio in person but online because they are
touching it they're feeling it they're describing it to you they're talking to you about how it
smells even though you can't smell it and they're really like enveloping you
in that experience as if you were touching and feeling it yourself because that's the biggest struggle with
selling online yeah they can't touch and feel so they need you to describe it you can and there's a
reason why qvc and all these home shopping channels talk the way they talk it's not just because they woke up one day and thought
oh let's talk very different they do it because it works because it sells product it shifts product
um what was that movie there was a movie that came out recently about uh the later that sold mops on
tv channel do you know the one i mean oh i don't ah it's gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna figure
it out i'm gonna figure it out and i'm gonna let you know which one it is because i watched it the other day and i thought it was so great it's about this
lady who um she's she she creates a mop you know she creates
this idea for a mop invests all the money into it um and then it just does it just
you know doesn't really sell so she manages to force her away onto her home tv channel uh and they insist that one of their
presenters presents it and she's like you're not doing it like i would do it you're not you're not describing it like i would
describe it and so she gets on the air she kind of forces her way on and tells tells the story of the mop the
way that she would do it and they sell like hotcakes it becomes a best-selling product it's based on a true story
um and i just can't remember uh i'm just gonna google it now movie
about mop on home channel shopping channel do you call them mops
in the states yes you know what i mean when i say a mop i think so
the move is called joy a film uh that's it joy so do watch it it's got
jennifer lawrence in it so she plays a character okay uh robert de niro's in it
um who plays like us her father so it's a really great movie yeah yeah totally oh my gosh what a great cast for for a
mop that's amazing oh yes okay i definitely need to watch that but that is exactly it right is
that's why and here's you know i'm in the u.s right i grew up in new
york and now i live in california and so life on the coasts in the u.s is very
different from the middle of the country and we're really the minority because you
know someone on the coast will think of a home shopping network be like i don't watch those right but a lot of
the us the middle that makes up the majority of us they do and that is the average person
that we're maybe selling to here so i think if you you have to
really think about who that end user is and what's going to be important to them and sometimes you know geography matters
on what's going to actually land with them so that's why i like to use the home shopping networks as an example
because they are they are selling you the product that's such a good idea
that's actually i'm gonna go we're gonna have a conversation tomorrow when i talk to the beauty guys homework guys let's go watch qvc let's
go watch the home shopping network or whatever it's called when they're selling beauty products let's take note of what they're doing
that can be our home homework so if you're listening to the show find out when they're selling your
kind of products and listen to what they do and figure out how you can replicate that on your site right
i think that's a brilliant idea even going to look at you know some of
the bigger influencers in your space you know we're talking about makeup when they're
doing youtube videos right like there is a certain way that they go about explaining what they're doing and how
they're applying it and they talk to you about the texture how does it feel on their skin like they're doing all of that for a
reason it's because they're that's what their audience wants to know and especially in beauty now with
covid you know you're not going to be going into a store and like trying on
makeup anymore like that's just not going to be a thing so the more that you can talk to them about
all that they would experience when they were touching it and feeling it the better
off you'll be yeah that's like my number one thing um and of course you know translating
that into the written word as well in your product descriptions but i think
people consume information differently so you have some people that
would prefer to watch a video you have some people that would prefer to read i watch videos on mute always so if
there are no captions right i don't know what's going on because even though i have headphones
i usually don't put them in whereas my husband he watches videos all day he always has
his air pods in so he's actually listening to the sound um you know if someone is reading while
they're commuting if that's even a thing anymore i don't know you know maybe they're also doing it
without the sound on and there's a bunch of statistics out there that actually talk about this yeah especially on social media isn't it
yeah so when you're creating that content like you have to think about all those little things
and aside from you know video and your product descriptions
think about where people are spending the most amount of time on your site and i would look at your
analytics for this but if there's spending more time on
your collections versus your individual products or on your home page then that's where you
want to make sure they can see this really important information so you may have
you know this block on your home page that's towards the bottom that you think is really great but like
if nobody scrolls down that far yeah then they're never gonna see it so
using a heat map to get a sense of how people actually navigate around and then move the information
so they actually see it yeah no it's again it's such an important point and it's easy enough to test isn't it
these days it really really is easy enough to test and again going back to our supermarkets they do that all the time they're always
moving products around never in the same place whenever i go to the pig in supermarket i always have to search it out but
they're figuring out what the best location is for certain products aren't they and they understand products are eye
level yeah they're going to sell an awful lot more than the products on the lower shelf so the actual products have to pay to be there
so again just understanding that about your website and what visitors are consuming and where such good advice okay so we've got video
we've got um good product descriptions and again you can inject personality can't you into those product descriptions
um for the few that do read it uh make it interesting right make it
interesting and we've got good product descriptions um and so what else
would you look at on the site photos photos photos i
what i see and i think it depends on what level of business you're at right but i think a lot of smaller
entrepreneurs or people who are just starting they don't want to invest money in good photographs because it
just feels like this extra expense but it's actually what's probably going to do the majority of selling for you
yeah it doesn't have to be complicated right you don't have to necessarily hire a professional photographer but it does
need to be light and bright and all of that stuff and i think it you have to put a little time and energy
into it i will say if you are comfortable on video and you are getting
on video then you can probably stand to have less good product photos right because
the video is going to kind of outweigh it but ultimately you need good photos
and you have to think about the product itself what is the right type of photo
so if you're selling clothing well like you really do need a model in it because people need to understand
how it fits and how it moves right um and i also see a lot of
photos just taken too far away from the subject like get on in there get the details get all
the angles and you know i probably said this already but i always try and think of what would the
experience be like if they were in person they would pick it up they would turn it around they'd read
the back how can you recreate that online through photography through you know
video through written description very good and like you say i don't think taking
photographs has to be complicated but light and breezy like nary is good and we've found actually um i have i've
not got it with me my wife's nicked it but my i've got the iphone i think it's not the latest one but you know what
that takes unbelievable photos these days use that to take the photo use lightroom to edit it and bam you have got an
amazing photo you just got to think about it right geez um no very very good so get in the
photos uh right on your site get in there get into the detail on the photos
have lots of photos why not because you know people love to see it they can scroll through the photos or they can
ignore them but you know one of the things that we did and like you say what do people do when they walk into the store
in a beauty in a skin care center they pick it up they turn around they read the instructions on the back of the box
so we started photographing the back of the box and putting that on the site it was like it just felt a bit weird
because well this is don't know you take a picture of the front of the box now you do that but take a picture of the side
and the back as well and again just more engagement just by photographing the sides and the backs of
the boxes yep and even you know the the ingredients like if you do have a
product like that you know you want the ingredients written out on your product page it's really important especially if
people are ingesting it or putting it on their skin right like we need to know what's in it
um but like we said some people look at photos some people
read things some people don't do any of that you just don't know so you you can't really have too much
content in my opinion as long as you're smart about where you put it so that you don't overwhelm them exactly yeah and we found
actually long form product pages always convert more than short form content
um always and it do and i i look at the stats and people don't scroll down it's just that it's there general
meaning you've got you've gone to the trouble of putting the information they're not going to read it and don't
feel dishonest when they don't but if they've seen it and they know it's there so that just gives them a little bit of confidence
you know and it that's that's fantastic you know that's that's what it should be yes that's such a good point
the confidence because they need to be confident that you are legit
right like you are just some random company on the internet they don't know you they
need to be able to trust you so if they see that you put in the time energy effort think about you know we've all
gone to a website and been like i don't know this website looks a little janky and
like who is this person behind it so that looks actually do matter in this case
because it helps with the trust factor for sure yeah now i i mean aside from the fact
you use the word janky which i i i think i'm gonna i'm gonna take that one you can use
the the the popcorn idea or whatever it was you're going to take oh it's the deli analogy you use that i'm going to use the word
janky because that's just fantastic now um where was i going with this uh
so we were talking in the prequel we were talking about how um how on instagram one of the things
i've seen a lot and i think you mentioned it whereby a lot of companies have tricked on to this idea that actually i'm gonna throw
an advert on instagram i'm you're gonna go to their website uh and you'll pay i don't know
books you may never actually get that product it became a big deal right yeah yes i
have been victim of that it's really disheartening
yeah it's not great no it's not great and it wasn't an expensive thing i think it was like a
necklace or something like that but it never came and then when i tried to
go back and contact them the website didn't even exist anymore like it was just like
shut down um so yes i've been a victim of that and that happens to people and so with
the barrier to entry of e-commerce being so low now right because you have
all of these fully hosted platforms it's really easy for anyone to just throw up a website
while people are more comfortable shopping online than they were maybe five years ago or even a year ago
there are that many more opportunities for people to get swindled
and it can make them a little weary so it is really important to be legit and have social proof and
product reviews and all of that kind of stuff yeah i totally agree more and more
people are getting burned with it the amount of inquiries actually we get say at jersey is this product uh product
legitimate product or is it grey market import how do i know is it do you mean it's like this is really fascinating it's
become a big problem right so people how do we how do we know and so you have
to go to great lengths to explain to people actually where we are a legitimate company um here are the reviews here the
authorization journey and so on and so forth and because you're right people are getting jaded um yeah and so all of the stuff that
you've actually talked about and helped us with the video the doing good product content all of that
is just giving you that proof that that confidence isn't it the customer confidence to buy from you and think
actually i'm not going to get shafted here if i purchase from your website i'm hopefully going to get a good service
right yeah i mean if they see you and that's the other thing with video is people think it needs to be
this big beautiful overdone production and it really doesn't actually the more
real and raw it is the more likely that person is to connect with you and like if you're doing a video at your kitchen
table where you're sitting and making your product or you're packing the product whatever it is you're doing
i'm like oh look at that yeah let me i'm gonna buy this from her she can go buy herself something nice
this weekend like yeah it's really versus some big company sometimes all the bells and
whistles actually make you a little bit more untrusting yeah yeah
yeah because if i call them i'm going to get put in a queue somewhere and i'd and it's going to be horrific isn't it and i
think you're right i think for the longest time certainly in the uk you would look at websites and go
actually you're a small company trying to look big because that's what we thought we had to do
but bring it back to what we talked about at the beginning you can be a small company and celebrate being small because small
actually is a massive advantage in the eyes of a lot of consumers these days when you present that story in the right
way absolutely yeah yeah and for the customer to
know that they're more than just a number you know like if i go into any
of the big stores these people don't know who i am they don't if i don't shop there
tomorrow because i had a crappy experience they don't care because there's a million other people lining up to buy
from them but for the small company when you're able to put so much more
into that experience your customers can feel that and can tell the difference yeah and that's totally true we had a
guest on the show a few weeks ago who was talking um about uh when a customer buys from
your sort of follow-up sequences and how you need to sort of think that through and so i said well give me an example
and she gave me an example of a website who i subsequently went and ordered a product from because i wanted to see what they did
and just because she said i was like i'm curious and such is my job i basically buy products online just to have a nose
really um part of my research and and one of the things that i loved when i got the
product from them it was beautifully packaged um and it was a leather journal and
there was a handwritten note in there and and the person that sent me the handwritten note was the person that
emailed me like three times before i got my product and it was somehow connected all up and
i thought actually that was quite wonderful and so she uh it was a she she emails me
like five or six weeks later hey how's it going do you need any refills do you need this do you need that
and i'm like this is amazing because no longer is it this company it's actually all about my relationship
now with this person and so now i'm like i don't know if i'd buy another journal from anywhere else
i just quite like this company they're easy you know yeah and so it's that kind of thing
isn't it that level of detail and service you can do as a small business that actually the big guys can't do
no definitely not and there you know it doesn't have to be you sitting down at the desk the moment the sale comes in and like
typing up this email there are tools to help you do that um but you can still
make it look more personal like you did just sit down at your desk another point what i
found too is you know if you think back community and personal
relationships have really always been a thing in business right and then we kind of went through
this period where maybe it was a little bit less important it became a little bit more impersonal as our digital world
has changed people are just naturally more disconnected from each other then the pandemic came we're even more
disconnected from each other so people are craving
connection more so now than they really ever have because they
don't have it anymore you know um and so now is such a really great time to just
dial that up as much as you can that's totally true you know what one of our brands we sell
on the skincare side is aimed at let's just say a specific age range um
an elderly age range so we have people who call up um not because they've got any problems
or any issues they just want to chat to the customer service want skills have a chat yeah hey how you
doing i'm all right how are you do you want to buy anything sure let's have a chat first
okay all right as long as i know what i'm doing and it's quite it's just quite it's quite it's that craving like you say of
community which i think is quite nice and so if i bring this all back we're talking about how do we
um how do we beat our competitors right how do we convince customers to buy from us rather
than our competitors one of the things that i don't know do you do this i i
always buy products from my competitors always and i send those products back i keep
hold of them i write emails complaining about them not because necessarily there's anything
wrong i'm just i'm just an awkward little git and i want to see what they're doing right it's just all about research do you do that or is that just me being
nuts so yes i have done that um for sure
to see what their purchase funnel is like what emails am i going to get how are they approaching it i definitely do
all of that the one thing i would caution though is give yourself kind of
a time limit that you are going to put your energy into that
because what ends up happening is you soak up all of this information
that you end up taking no action or you you get out of thinking about your
own customer right because you don't know what's actually going on behind the scenes of that business so
you could see something that you think is really cool but for all you know it doesn't actually work for them
or they could be broke they could have no profit you don't know so i i do caution
to always have a little bit of a balance there and i mean hey we're all works in progress right
absolutely me more than most to be fair jessica me more than most yeah but that's such good advice such good
advice even when it comes to just you know consuming content right so
even with this podcast right it's really great to listen to podcasts but if you never take action on anything
and you're just constantly in consume mode it's not going to help you to just
hear it you have to go do something about it no you do and actually quite rightly so
i mean i i purged to the podcast in my player uh recently and i got i got i must have got
unsubscribed from but i was subscribed to like podcast streams i'm like i i listen i'm never going to listen to
all of those and so i and the ones that i was listening to like you say i was just listening to them i wasn't taking action
i'm like this is this doesn't make sense to me and so i chose like um three or four podcasts which i felt gave me the most
value right now that i can actually put some effort into and learn from uh and and actually make changes and
pivot accordingly after i've listened to them so um hopefully you are doing that listening to this show and we're one of the three
or four on your list uh and hopefully you're doing what jessica saying actually doing something about it so you know you've heard
some amazing tips tonight what actions are you going to do what's your biggest takeaway do let us know because we'd
love to hear it um you know because that's what it's all about isn't it helping you grow your e-commerce business you've actually got
to do the work uh unfortunately it doesn't grow just by listening to the podcast uh which would
would be really nice if it did yeah for sure but then everybody would be doing it right and i you know for those of you
listening who i've obviously been talking about video a lot here and you may be pushing back
one of the things i will say because i was never comfortable in front of the camera and you know then
i start this business and i basically am the business so i needed to show up
i recorded a lot of videos by myself that will never see the light of day
i know exactly what you're talking about so don't be afraid to just do video
all your lonesome it can completely be terrible you trip over all your words
you look dumb doesn't matter just keep doing them you'll get more used to even just looking at yourself back in the you know
the video if you're doing it on your phone or whatever um and that makes it much much easier
now i totally agree i've got so many videos which are on like vimeo or youtube which are
private you're never going to see them and in fact i should probably go and delete them one day because my staff might release them
and you do you look back on them and go what was i thinking right yeah but that's how you learn
that's how you you craft right you don't you don't suddenly just become great at video you've got to do at least hours worth of rubbish
videos before you start to get some kind of idea um a top tip here right if you've not
noticed what this is what we do on the ecommerce podcast here actually have guests and so if you find it harder
to talk to the camera by yourself get somebody on zoom or get somebody
with you and have a conversation with them like a customer and answer their questions be animated
if you need that if you need that feedback you can use that as well which is i mean you know without being too crude
we use this content on our websites on our marketing websites but it's it's it just works so much
better when we have amazing people and guests like you jessica on the show rather me just sitting here going let me
tell you about popcorn um it just doesn't work as well you need i think you need to you can bounce off
people so don't be afraid to go and get people go and get customers you can interview them you can talk to them you can answer their questions
record it and use those as videos genuinely people are happy they don't expect like hollywood
production do they if you're uh if you're a smaller no they really they really don't they
really don't i think they're quite forgiving yeah that's true i think the one piece of
advice i would give uh is actually audio is the most important thing about video
it's such an issue an odd thing isn't it but is that would you agree i would agree
it can be really distracting if it's super echoey or it just doesn't it's not clear or
it's really low so i would definitely get yourself an external microphone for sure yeah do the audio
well much more than lighting and all that sort of stuff but um yeah check out the audio listen jessica i
have really really enjoyed tonight's show got a lot out of it uh my staff are gonna think i'm nuts tomorrow when i go and
say right guys let's get qvc on um and so we're gonna have that
conversation tomorrow um how can people reach you how can they get ahold of you how can they connect with you if they want to for sure so you
can find me at ecommercebadassery.com and i am e-commerce i am
e-commerce badassery on all the channels facebook instagram um and i would love to chat with you and
just kind of see where you're at i love learning about you know everyone's at a different point
in their ecommerce journey so i love to pay attention to what people are telling me so that i can create
content that will specifically help them ah you take your own medicine
i do i do sometimes you know i'm a work in progress i have to remind
myself sometimes but yes i try you're me both i find that when i go and do coaching with clients
i'm always much better at finding what they should do and rather than my own business making jeremy it's like wow how does that work
why can't i do this on my own business i have no idea i'm so too close to it yeah two tunnel
vision don't you actually that you need that external help to ask you the straightforward questions
um so that's e-commerce badassery a-s-e-r-y.com
why ecommerce badassery what was that all about
so i actually struggled for a long time to come up with the name and i really wanted something that
reflected my personality i'm a very particular kind of person they either love me or
they hate me i'm a little bit crass i'm very like direct and to the point
um so i wanted something to encompass that and it was really about
the person i wanted to work with is like that scrappy just kind of figures it out as
they go um and because that's who i am and so i felt like that really got
that message across fantastic great name it is a great it's very memorable i'm not gonna lie it's very memorable i
spoke to the lady at ecommercebadassery.com they'll remember that more than jessica
yeah probably that's probably a good thing right so yeah um listen uh really really appreciate you
being on the show really enjoyed the conversation uh with you learn so much thanks so much for being
with us uh been an absolute pleasure jessica thank you thank you so much for having me matt
it's been a blast no problem thank you okay wasn't jessica absolutely fantastic
a big thanks to my very special guest uh wasn't that a great show you know uh what wherever you're listening to
this podcast whatever it is you're doing i hope you understand uh i just love this kind of stuff and i hope
that comes out i'm always looking for ways to grow my own ecommerce business and whenever i speak to a guest
i always want to find some real practical nuggets that i can use myself and i really enjoyed that tonight i'm
definitely doing the qvc research that was my takeaway for tonight but what about you
what was your takeaway do writers and let us know write in the comments below the videos
or on social media or just get in touch with us at ecommercepodcast.net and let us know your big takeaways and
get in touch with jessica too i'm sure she'd love to reach out to you and connect with you i hope you got some great stuff out of it
and if you did if you enjoyed this show i would appreciate it if you could rate the show on itunes
and even share it out so that we can connect with a few more folks around the world always appreciate you doing that and
always enjoy uh reading your emails and comments about the show and connecting with you guys on social
media so thanks for doing that and keep on doing it now as i said at the start of the show
all the notes links and even the transcript from tonight's show
are available for free and you can access them at ecommercepodcast.net
forward slash uh that's just the number
ecommercepodcast.netand you will find all of the show notes from uh tonight with jessica and you can
get those for free so all that's left for me to say is thanks for listening make sure you come back next time
as we have some great guests just like jessica lined up for the show uh on and they're gonna
we're gonna pick their brains and figure out how to grow our own online business so that's it from me
thank you so much for watching i'll be back again very soon
you've been listening to the e-commerce podcast with matt edmondson join us next time for more interviews
tips and tools for building your business online