Use Growth-Driven Design to Build the Website Your Customers Want | Tanner Holt

Tanner Holt [0:00 - 0:00]: Foreign.

Matt Edmundson [0:05 - 2:38]: Hello and welcome back to the Ecommerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. Now, this is a show all about delivering ecommerce. Wow. And to help us do just that, today I am chatting with Tanner Holt from Mach 7 Marketing about this rather intriguing topic of growth driven design. We're going to get into what that means and it impacts you and your online business. So you're going to want to do the usual, grab your notebooks, grab your pens if you can, and if you're old school like me and like a notebook and pen, of course, some of you may just take notes on your computer. Some of you may be out walking the dog or driving and can't take notes, which is where the newsletter is going to help you. Yes, it is. So if you haven't done so already, head over to ecommercepodcast.net, sign up for the newsletter. We have been making some changes to the newsletter recently. So it used to be we would send out the show notes and, and just basically that was about it. The show notes and the links to make it easy for you to have all that stuff in your inbox. Now we've started to add a few bits and bobs to it. Oh yes. So the newsletter is becoming more and more useful and interesting and has some great insights. So if you haven't done so already, just head over to ecommercepodcast.net and sign up to the ecommercer newsletter, which is what we are now calling it. Be great to see you in there. Come and say hi. Okay. And of course, a very warm welcome to you. If this is your first time with us, I almost forgot. I'm terribly sorry. Welcome to the show. If this is your first time with us, it's great that you're here, great that you're with us. Like I say, this is just a show about ecommerce. I do e commerce and I just love to talk to experts ecommerce commerce, founders ecommerce commerce and just figure out how we win on this whole journey because it feels like it's a little bit more complicated than it was when I first started way back in 2002, if you can believe that. But there's definitely a few more things to think about, like growth driven design. So let's talk about today's guest, Hannah Holt, the mad scientist of search engines. Oh, yes. Now, with nearly a decade of marketing experience, he's worked with big names like imax, eMusic and MTV, winning an international business award along the way. So from driving, triple digit traffic growth for local Businesses to land in.1 million views for Simon and Schuster. Tanner knows how to get results. Yes, he does, which is why he's on the show. Tanner, welcome, man. Great to have you. How are we doing?

Tanner Holt [2:38 - 2:40]: We're doing great, Matt. Thanks for having me.

Matt Edmundson [2:40 - 2:44]: It's great that you're here, man. Great that you're here. Now, whereabouts are you in the world?

Tanner Holt [2:45 - 2:49]: Yeah, I'm based in the US in the state of. The lovely state of Utah.

Matt Edmundson [2:50 - 2:53]: One of the few states in America that I've not been to.

Tanner Holt [2:54 - 2:57]: That's. That's a shame. It's got to be at the top of your next list.

Matt Edmundson [2:57 - 3:01]: I really do want to go to Utah. I. It's. Apparently it's beautiful.

Tanner Holt [3:02 - 3:10]: It is. You got the nice slopes coming up for this winter and then in the summer you got the good national parks. So. Yeah, for every season.

Matt Edmundson [3:10 - 3:14]: Everything for every season. Is that the tagline? Because if it's not, it totally should be.

Tanner Holt [3:14 - 3:20]: It should be. The tourism department now and tell them.

Matt Edmundson [3:21 - 3:41]: You should register the domain, everything for every season and just trademark it, patent it, do whatever you need to do. But I think that's quite cool. Well, listen, man, thanks for joining us. Let's jump straight into it. What is growth driven design? This is a phrase I see on your website. I know that you've spoken to the team about it here. What is it? Let's start there.

Tanner Holt [3:41 - 4:34]: Yeah, so it's a new approach to traditional web design. So let's kind of go over what traditional web design first is before we get into growth driven web design. You know, traditional website design for someone is nowadays. You know, back in the day, you usually had to find an agency or you do it yourself and you say, hey, agency, I want a new website. You pay them a lot of money, you wait three months and then they launch it and they try and make this perfect product and you're usually unhappy with it. And most people expect it to launch with tonnes of traffic and, you know, tonnes of sales. And that doesn't happen. Yeah. Then have to add the marketing piece. Right. Growth driven design is a little bit different. Instead of having this three months, let's look at it like a staircase, right? You kind of have your first three months where you're really doing nothing. You launch, you get a little bit of traffic and then most people wait, you know, maybe a year or two and then they'll do that same process over and over.

Matt Edmundson [4:34 - 4:35]: Yeah, yeah.

Tanner Holt [4:35 - 5:11]: This big long staircase. With growth driven design, we're actually testing and using data. You're starting with a minimum viable product. So you still have a little bit of a strategy but you're starting with your base pages. You know, you don't need some fancy calculator on your website right at the beginning. Add that if your users want it. And that's the whole point of testing. Why build something if they aren't going to use it? The last thing you want to do is build some resource that's going to cost you two, $3,000 that no one wants. And that's the difference with growth driven web design is you start with that minimum viable product and you a b test and add things as you go.

Matt Edmundson [5:12 - 5:21]: So that's, that's a really interesting. And I've actually heard this phrase before, this growth driven phrase and I'm trying to, as you're talking, it sounds familiar a little bit. I'm trying to rack my brain.

Tanner Holt [5:21 - 5:25]: Probably HubSpot. HubSpot is a big founder. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson [5:25 - 6:16]: Yes. This is where I knew I'd heard something similar and where in effect I love this strategy. You start off with a minimum viable product. You, you build something quick. It does not have to be perfect. You launch it and you see what goes on and you test and you build on the basis of data and where it's all going. Which on one hand it sounds wonderful, right? But on the other hand, I guess my question is, are we too used to doing it the other way? Right? Are we too used to sort of. Because let's face it, we all get emotionally involved, don't we, in, in what we're building and the way things look. I mean it, it, it, how easy is it to do? I guess would be a good question here.

Tanner Holt [6:16 - 6:28]: You know, it used to be a lot easier. We always hear, hey, Google's making AdWords and that's supposed to simplify business owners lives. But if you look at it, companies have like 10 people just to manage one AdWord account, right? You want to make it simpler?

Matt Edmundson [6:29 - 6:29]: Tell me about it.

Tanner Holt [6:29 - 7:56]: Harder, right? So it is a little bit harder than it used to be. You know, a few years ago I think. Oh, has it been two years already? Probably about two years that they had Google optimised where you go and you can a b test your website for free. The problem with testing now is it is a pay to play game. You generally have to have some really nice software and for starting out, that generally doesn't make sense. You have to kind of take a stab in the dark with your minimum viable product. But what a lot of people don't do is they don't follow those Metrics. If I were to go back and say, like the biggest mistake that I see new people, I do a lot of freelancing work on Fiverr. So I get a lot of these new people that are so excited wanting to launch, you know, that perfect. They're emotionally attached but they don't know what metrics to watch and they'll just say, oh, I didn't get sales this week. And then they go change everything. And they'll change 10 things. Well, what things made that increase or what made that decrease? The majority of people starting out don't even have the right. You know, they're like, I just had 50 people go to my website and I didn't get a sale. When we know most sites generally overall convert at 2 to 3%. So if they're not at least 100 visitors, it's hard to tell that. So metric is, are a really big thing at the beginning. But to start out, a lot of people could do what I like to call, and this is kind of where I've developed my own philosophy is microtesting at that app level. Do your testing on the ads and implement it to your site a little bit later. So that's how you can say your small dogs can compete with those big dogs like Netflix and Amazon.

Matt Edmundson [7:56 - 8:13]: So how do you. I mean, I've heard this idea before. I don't think I've heard it called microtesting. But this idea you're testing with the ads, just explain to us your process a little bit tanner on how you do that. What do you mean when you say do micro testing with your ads?

Tanner Holt [8:13 - 9:49]: Yeah, so I start, I like to do with colour block and the first thing I test is, hey, am I following? Am I solving a problem that people actually need? And I'll just take. It'll be, you know, usually 10 words of text and it'll say true or false at the top. And it might be true or false. You know, I've spent all of my ad budget and my website isn't performing and if people click that, I know that's a pain point. And then the next test I'll kind of line it up and I just do it to 400 impressions, nothing big. Each test maybe is only $25. Again, we're not looking at statistical significance, but you know, statistical significance would be maybe hundreds of dollars. Yeah, but we're getting a good stab in the dark within 24 to 48 hours. Enough to say, okay, here's my problems. I generally want a 1% click through rate and I Want that click to be under 50 cents to just validate. And I call it a minimum viable concept. And I might get four or five, but I'm going to take that best one and I know this is the biggest problem or the biggest desired state, then I'll make headlines for it. And after I do the headlines, I'll do the offer. That was my biggest mistake starting out is I had my offer. Hey, let's do a video audit. Everyone on Fiverr is buying it. No, I wasted so much time when people just wanted a checklist. If I would have validated that there was a checklist, I would have saved myself hours of free audits. If I validated that one thing. You kind of validate and you get people to your website and you make changes as you go. Again, it's. You're using that scientific process. Is it statistically significant? No, but it gets you a lot quicker where you, where you want to be.

Matt Edmundson [9:49 - 10:53]: Yeah. I think this is something which is I've always found quite intriguing because if I think about, talk about ad agencies, right? So we, let's talk about. Most people have an ad agency, they don't tend to manage their own Google Adwords. And so going to an ads agency and saying, right, I want to do these micro tests, this is the kind of thing that I want to test. I think, I don't think they, they like that. Maybe that's wrong, actually. And if you're an ads agency, please don't shout me. I will stand corrected. Maybe it's something that people aren't really used to doing. And I think, I don't know if you've got any advice here because I think a lot of people who are starting out, maybe you've got an ads agency involved at least a little bit. Because I think it is like you say you need 10 people just to manage an account these days. How would, how would someone starting out go about communicating with an ads agency or, or even managing the ads themselves to do these tests? Because it feels like quite a large barrier to overcome.

Tanner Holt [10:53 - 12:25]: It is. And there's that's. I think it's that knowledge gap. Most business owners, I mean, there's some that don't have enough time because they're getting enough sales and they're focusing on their business. But generally what I've seen at least more on that Fiverr side or that upwork is, is the knowledge gap. So they outsource, but they don't ask the right questions. So the first thing I would ask is, have you done, you know, Generally ask, people will ask, hey, have you used, you know, done this for, let's say a supplement company? Have you worked with supplement companies in the past? That's the first question. Great, okay. Are you using the exact same copy over and over? Because let's be honest, most ad agencies want to scale and testing makes it a lot harder to scale running different ads. And that's where I think you're going to have that conflict with the ad agencies saying, hey, yeah, we want to test, but we want to test a little bit and have little variations so we can still scale and do a lot of clients. Yeah, I think looking for an agency that, you know, has not only worked in your same industry, but also is telling you, hey, are you using generic messaging or are you just using AI prompts? That's another thing I'd ask today. How, how is AI used in your process? Yeah, what's the human part of your process? Yeah, that's the biggest mistake is, you know, I see people just copy and paste from ChatGPT. Yeah, this is going to be a winner and it's not. And then people get frustrated. Oh, I got it from AI. It should have worked. You need that little bit of expertise. Usually at the end it can get you 80% there. That final 20%. You know, crossing that finish line generally is going to require some type of expertise or past experience.

Matt Edmundson [12:26 - 13:38]: Yeah, fair enough. It's helpful because I think this idea of testing things on ads first, first testing, like you say, the problem, which I thought was quite clever, then once you've understood that, testing headlines with the ads before you've even really spent massive amounts trying to design stuff on a website or for very little money, you've spent a few hundred bucks and actually you've got some really key data, haven't you? And I think it's, it's a really smart way of doing it. And I think, I can't remember if Tim Ferriss talked about it in the four hour work week, but he definitely talked about building a minimum viable product and testing it and seeing actually whether people click. This is a really great way of doing that. We've, we've done this kind of thing in the past to test things like head, like a title for, you know, if I was going to write a book and I wanted to know what to call that book, then I would run ads with different titles in there to see which one, you know, got the most clicks kind of thing, which one resonated with people more or podcast titles. You know, what do I call my podcast with 25 bucks, I can tell you which one click the, you know, people click the most on. And so it doesn't necessarily have to go anywhere, but it's. It's quite an interesting way of using ads. How long have you been doing this.

Tanner Holt [13:38 - 14:09]: For about two to three years with the microfunnels. And what's really interesting, I like to call them minimum viable concepts, because you should generally get a list. But hey, you get that headline that works. It doesn't only work for your head. Your headline for your ad, put it in the copy of the landing page, put it in your subject line, email, put it in your print. You know it's gonna work. And that's what I try and tell people. Hey, it's about the concepts. Like, yes, at the end of the day, when I work with people, I want to have a funnel that generates sales, because at the end of the day, that's what people want, right?

Matt Edmundson [14:09 - 14:09]: Yeah.

Tanner Holt [14:09 - 14:16]: But if I were to say, what's really more important that people lack is the, Hey, I can use this to validate everything in my business.

Matt Edmundson [14:16 - 14:17]: Yeah.

Tanner Holt [14:17 - 14:23]: And that's why I call them those minimum viable concepts, because you're validating building blocks.

Matt Edmundson [14:23 - 14:30]: That's a really great way of doing it. Have you got any stories around this? I'm really intrigued. You know, everyone loves a good story.

Tanner Holt [14:30 - 14:35]: Yeah, let's see a good story. Are we looking for a good reward story or a big failure?

Matt Edmundson [14:35 - 14:39]: Oh, let's do both. Yeah, yeah. Start with the reward and let's do the fail.

Tanner Holt [14:39 - 15:35]: So I think the biggest reward that we had is we had a coach. He was a sexual wellness coach, just starting out his business, and he had gone through two or three different, you know, trying to do things on his own. You know, we met in a networking group and he had tried everything, but he just wasn't getting any leads. Well, we went through and we were able to validate, you know, what he was looking for. And he started getting more leads within one month of just these micro tests. We didn't even do the full funnel. We weren't putting a full ad budget. And he had more success than he had in all the other types of coaching. I think that's like one win when it comes to. And like, he understood the process. And the best part was he could start doing a little bit on his own. And it was a collaborative effort by the end. And we're still working with him, you know, fine tuning the pitch, because eventually we got the leads. Then we just learned that, hey, we need to work on Some salesmanship, right?

Matt Edmundson [15:35 - 15:35]: Yeah.

Tanner Holt [15:35 - 16:09]: But we were able to identify that which was really good. Another really great win. And this was just one from one micro test is we were working with a Spanish course and their target market was us, people that wanted to travel. Well, we just tested a few different areas and we found that again, going back to those minimum viable concepts, you know, it was about 80, 90 cents a click. We got it down to 10 cents a click because the conversion rate was so good with expats living in Spanish speaking countries because no one's targeting those countries.

Matt Edmundson [16:09 - 16:09]: Wow.

Tanner Holt [16:09 - 17:30]: And those are the people that need it. They have a true pain. And we were able, instead of coming up with some fluffy article about hey, learn Spanish in 10 days, it's hey, how to negotiate your rent when you're a digital nomad. You know, titles that actually have value. So within one test, we took his costs down by what, a hundred percent, went from 80 to 10 cents. So that already right. There was savings. And then we got further along and were able to do that. So I'd say those are the two big success stories. The failure would probably be the best. Failure I always like is kind of that checklist one that I was talking about is, man, if I would have tested, I would have been able to save myself on I can't tell you how many audits I did hundreds of audits, you know, and some of them turned into sales. And that's the whole point. You think you have to play this game. But man, if I just would have given them a checklist, they would have been fine. And I could have just hopped on a sales call and sold them there instead of spending an hour and then another hour on a sales call. You know, really validating. I think another failure was going through the testing process a little bit and the person was so set, hey, we have to use my lead magnet. And then having to go back to the drawing board and finding out they wanted something completely different. Yeah, hundreds of dollars. It was a great ebook. It was nice, it looked fancy.

Matt Edmundson [17:30 - 17:32]: No one wanted it, no one was.

Tanner Holt [17:33 - 17:47]: Clicking, no one liked the title. And I mean, we were able to slot the title and repurpose a lot, but it saved a lot. I think at that point it wasn't free ebook. People wanted a case study or a free report. That's what we ended up calling it. People like those free reports.

Matt Edmundson [17:48 - 18:38]: That's interesting. And it's really smart too, you know, and I'm a big fan of doing this before you go and build something, like you say, because it, it doesn't cost money. And you can actually find out what people want. And, and I, I'm always surprised, actually, because what I thought people would want and what they actually want, well, they're quite often two different things. Which is, which I find quite fascinating. How would this. I get how this would work. If I was starting a new business, like, you know, or I wanted to use like a lead magnet or something, like generate some leads. How would this work? If I'm an existing E Com business and I sell supplements, the example you used earlier, I'm a supplement company. I'm kind of thinking, where do we go from here? What's next? What should I be thinking?

Tanner Holt [18:39 - 20:35]: Yeah, I mean, product development is a great way. Hey, what product should we build next? But let's just say, hey, I want to increase my sales. Let's say we have some coffee alternative that we want to test. Well, what are people looking for in a coffee alternative? Let's find the real problem and then start it there. But I would say the biggest thing people miss is that emotion and making sure they get that right emotion with the benefit a lot of marketers and businesses are good at. Hey, we can solve X, Y, Z, abc. But you know, the person really cares about B and Y and then they're way at the bottom. Well, let's test them separately and then make sure B is the first bullet point and Y is the second bullet point. Because we know everyone has a short attention span, they're not going to get all the way to the bottom. So let's start with what resonates at the top. You can do it with images. Images is a big surprise. Now, I used to work at a neuromarketing lab where we used eye tracking and a lot of different things as well. Really fancy, really expensive. It has its benefits, but you can do a lot more using like a real. Instead of using a focus group doing ads, I like it a little bit better. Both have their place, but through these images, I mean, we've generally always found having a woman on the picture is always better than a man. Right. So there's psychological things. You know, women click on more women and men click on more women. But just because you have a clicky image doesn't mean that it resonates and it converts. You know, like, we found, like a lot of people, if the model was too attractive, men were just clicking on it because it was an attractive women woman and not because the product. Right. So there's definitely a balance. And even testing your images and combining it with the Headline, that's probably the biggest. Next thing I'd see is especially in sales, right? Yeah, they do so good. You get your marketing funnelled and you say, hey, we're gonna, you know, you focus on that. I think it's Donald Miller who talks about that story brand that.

Matt Edmundson [20:35 - 20:35]: Yes.

Tanner Holt [20:36 - 21:03]: Being that guide. You get him there and then on the first call it's hey, we can do X, Y and Z for you. And you start selling your product and you lose the sale. And a lot of people are doing that in their marketing. You know, I like to refer to it as that person at the party that just talks about themselves. Oh yeah, their ad is really good about saying, hey, we want to help you. And then you get to the landing page and it's me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, buy me by me, buy me. You know, you have to be congruent and that's one of the biggest things people miss.

Matt Edmundson [21:04 - 21:25]: So this growth driven design then is obviously you're starting off at the top. You've got your minimum viable product, you're using ads to help your test. You're. What does that minimum viable funnel look? I mean, you've used this phrase funnel, you've used MVC as a concept. What does that look like?

Tanner Holt [21:26 - 24:18]: Yeah, generally. And it can be as big or as small as you want it to be. But generally you're going to start, I like to say it's just one landing page. Like especially for a new business. Let's start with the product page. You know, SEO, you're going to get people to your homepage, but it's generally not going to be qualified traffic and it's more of a discovery page than a hey, let's buy. But generally you're going to start. If I was doing a new website for growth driven web design, you're going to start maybe with five key pages. You might start with a about us, a home, you know, your product page, contact and faq. Right. Those are your five key pages. Before you start exploring, hey, we want to add some fancy quiz we want to talk about. Let's do a video on the owners or social proof that was one that, you know, working with a company that was big on. We're going to save the environment and having those claims on their products or the product pages and seeing it not lift conversion rate. Right. Even though that was part of their brand. So there is also this give or take with branding, but it would probably start with five key pages. Then you do your test on your ads to get information, but simultaneously you're running some type of a B test on those actual pages as well, right. See which converts a lot of testing. And you have these break points, you know, in the funnel. And I would break it down by your journey, right? Your awareness, your consideration, your final product. And I would eventually start testing all three at the same time because you always want to prove them, but you should always start at the top. You know, I like to think of it like Floodgate, for example. If you're only letting 10% of the water up top and then you're optimising here, hey, that's great. But there's more benefit here. I think that's one of the most helpful reports in Google Analytics is that fireflow. Because I found a lot of people, when they come to audits, they want me to focus on their product page and they're like, hey, I'm not getting anyone to buy. I'll go in there like, hey, I'm just not getting add to carts. Okay. Well, I go into their analytics and people aren't even getting to the product page. So of course you're not going to be getting add to carts that they aren't getting to the product page. So how do you get them to the product page? We'll start sending them there first instead of another page. Or start making it more prominent that you want them to go to that page. Or maybe more subtle. Maybe you're too salesy and people feel it's scammy. You know, you have to really use that funnel report, but it very much is a process. The problem where I think a lot of people get lost kind of go into that simplicity is there's so much test and having a theme. What's my theme for this quarter? Okay, I'm really going to work on, you know, urgency. How can I add urgency to my awareness, consideration and the other page and just focus on that part or social proof. Once you start doing all the factors all at the same time, it can get really overwhelming. And start. But I think the biggest thing is start and then just start small and gradually add on.

Matt Edmundson [24:18 - 25:26]: Just build it out how. What about. This is super helpful, by the way, Tanner, and lots of thinking here going on. Um, I'm just thinking that I had a conversation recently with someone whose business is struggling. Right. So they're, they're getting some traffic to the website. Conversion is not great at the moment. Probably where we've, where if you look at the data, where things are not really great is returning customers. Right. So returning customers have fallen off a cliff in Fact, I was speaking to that the previous guest that we had on the show, Frederick. And the only reason that this is in my head because full disclosure, ladies and gentlemen, I recorded that episode earlier. So I've done two episodes in one day. Which is why the conversation's fresh in my mind. Their returning customer sales are 70% down year on year. Right. Which is a really interesting place to find yourself. So how could we use your methodology to start to dig our way out of that hole?

Tanner Holt [25:27 - 27:41]: Yeah, we actually do a lot. So with a client that we've been doing in the supplement industry, they have a cancellation portal. Well, they have a pop up and seeing how easy or hard to make it so they can cancel but at the same time they're getting the information. Did you have too much product? Was it, did it not work? Right. And you kind of have a little survey or at least the options in that process. Yeah, gives you data collection. And then lastly I think, I mean you can always do sentiment and look at reviews. But the biggest thing that I think is the most helpful personally and for big sales companies this is like very common. But you know, interviewing the people that don't buy or the person that bought and ask them why, because most people go back and generally you want to have some type of third party. So do some type of interview because then that eliminates the bias. They're not going to tell you to their face like, ah, you're probably right, no one wants to be that rude. Well, some people might, you know, depending on how bad your product was, but you're gonna get a biassed, you know, response. So having some type of third party go in and you know, there's actually companies that do this is they just focus on those interviews and what they find is there's generally some miscommunication and once the consumer's like, oh, I didn't, I didn't realise that they go and buy it right away. And that can almost be your, you know, recovery sales team, so to say. But it's really finding out the why through those surveys, through those conversations. And you can still test things as well at the end with your retargeting you can maybe do an ad and say, hey, here's our people that didn't buy. And you just retarget people who visit your website in the last 30 days that you know, didn't buy and you can do your own funnel and find it for them. There are ways to test even at an ad level, as long as you get your targeting right, it's probably A little bit more expensive. A simple survey is probably just the best way to go. But those are some of the things I would look at and maybe what's the ease? Are they on a subscription? You know, maybe they should be on a subscription. You know, those are some of the things that I would kind of look at for those returning customers and saying like what is the issue? Is it, you know, an issue on their end, A product issue or is it a brand issue?

Matt Edmundson [27:42 - 28:22]: Yeah, interesting, interesting. The conversation with them will carry on and I'm intrigued. I'm picking everybody's brains on this at the moment because I'm really, I think it's a really interesting conundrum. So if we back up a little bit. One of the things that you talked about is a B testing, right? Is split testing different things on your. So you're testing your ads basically by creating different ads and seeing which ones pull the most. You're. We're then split testing the page, which you said actually in some respects doesn't make sense for the smaller business because of the amount of money involved. At what point does split testing make sense and how do I do that properly?

Tanner Holt [28:22 - 30:46]: Yeah, and this is the adult question, the chicken or the egg, Right. Do I want that perfect website before I spend thousands of dollars or do I spend thousand dollars to make sure I get that landing page right? At the end of the day you should do both at the same time. It's just figuring out what's the most cost effective way to do it. A smaller business. Yes. Is it statistically significant? You know, in a company that gets over, I mean I would say for any type of on site testing you need at least 3,000 visitors a month. Anything below that you still can test, but you're going to have to change three or four things. You're going to have to make big changes so you can get and really measure what made that change. Where after that you can start doing one variable at a time. And that's why I like that micro testing at the ad level. Because if you think let's go to an ad, right? And you just look at click through rate, you're only spending, you know, a few cents per click where once that person lands to your website, not every person that, I mean, I guess every person that clicks goes and lands to your site, but they bounce, right? It might be three or four dollars to get that one visitor. So testing on your website is just inherently more expensive than testing at that ad level. So that's where I say you always got to start Smaller businesses always start at that awareness at the top of the beginning. That's going to be your most cost effective change. You still can test throughout and there's some free trials and take advantage of those of those softwares. But you know, it's really finding. And that's why I like Unbounce. You know, Unbounce is a great landing page tool that allows you to build your page and do the testing all in one. Right. The most economical. Now it's a little bit harder to tie to Shopify. You have to do some little things if you're using a Shopify store to make that connection work. But that's probably the most economical that I've seen when it comes to actually testing the website. Yeah. But getting into that testing is just learning, you know that we, like you said, what is a split test? There's a control and a variable. When we're generally changing one or two things and we want to see how they compare. You can do time based, but let's just say, hey, week one, you know, you have a low conversion rate, but week two, you run a sale. How do you know? Was it the changes or your sale that made the difference? It's inevitable. There's too many things in a vacuum. You know, we can't be, you know, like a true scientist and have that one control.

Matt Edmundson [30:46 - 30:47]: Yeah.

Tanner Holt [30:47 - 31:07]: So it's important as we're testing to really make sure just because there's, you know, correlation isn't causation. You have to look at all those theories behind it. But really the first step is just getting in there and really looking at your data. If you don't know your data, I can't tell you how many people on Fiverr when I asked them, hey, what was your aov? They'll send me their monthly sales revenue.

Matt Edmundson [31:08 - 31:09]: Okay.

Tanner Holt [31:09 - 31:20]: You know, it's like, no, what's your, what's your purchase? What's your lifetime value? Right. You need to kind of start knowing those numbers and it's not bad if you have to say, oh, it's zero, at least you know the number.

Matt Edmundson [31:20 - 31:20]: Yeah.

Tanner Holt [31:20 - 31:35]: And some people are afraid to say, hey, it's like, I'll get a lot of people that'll say, oh, it's low. Well, what is low? Right? Yeah, you know, maybe low is a couple hundred and. Couple hundred. Yeah, it's a little lower than we'd like, but it's not 10 or 15.

Matt Edmundson [31:35 - 34:00]: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting you say that. Actually, I. There was a book written. I don't know if you ever read it, there was a book written years ago called Good to Great by Jim Collins. Really fascinating book, what Makes Good Companies Great. And in there, one of the chapters talks about the ability to confront the brutal facts, to understand the numbers and be okay that they are the actual numbers, but retain some sense of optimism that actually you can and will prevail. Right. Some kind of belief. It might not be today, might not be tomorrow, but there is that possibility. But you can't, you can't get your way out of a situation when you, where you don't know where you're starting. And like you, I find there isn't a lack of understanding around data and around what the numbers mean for the website. So when people say, oh my sales aren't good, it's a really, it's a really kind of unhelpful statement in many ways because I don't know what that means. Right. What is good and how do we define good? Why they're not good, at what point are they not good? What's selling, what's not selling, who's buying, who's not buying? There's, there's so much information that we need to know about, but our brains tend to get a bit fluffy, don't they? And they just go, our sales aren't good or our sales are low. And we, and to put a definitive number just tells us how bad it actually is. And we. I don't know whether it's a psychological thing that we just don't like to do it, but I like how if you're new to ecommerce or you're a small site, then actually testing at the ad level is actually probably a more cost effective way to do it. Rather than using ads to get people onto the site and then testing. I think that's a really interesting way of thinking. I don't think I've ever thought about it like that actually. But it makes a lot of sense. It really does make a lot of sense. At what point then, at what point do you make that switch from testing at the ad level to testing more on site? At what point does that make sense? Is there a hard and fast rule or is it very business dependent?

Tanner Holt [34:01 - 34:15]: No, it's probably very business dependent. But at the end of the day, the answer is you never stop testing. What's going to work for your audience. Three months ago might not work, you know, three months from now, Right. Think of COVID That was a big black swan event, right?

Matt Edmundson [34:15 - 34:16]: Yeah.

Tanner Holt [34:16 - 34:41]: All of a sudden everyone was stockpiling things and then once everyone started going to normal. I had a client that they were making, you know, they were a non profit selling PPEs and they were doing great. But then all of a sudden everyone was back and didn't want masks. Right. Their business model wasn't there. And I think, you know, you have to look, well, who is using masks? How can we get those people? And unfortunately, by the time they were asking those questions, it was too late.

Matt Edmundson [34:41 - 34:42]: Right.

Tanner Holt [34:42 - 34:55]: They had to pull the plug on their business. Where if they said, hey, we're still getting orders. Who are these people? Why are they still buying it? How do we get to these people? They probably could have saved, you know, save themselves the business.

Matt Edmundson [34:55 - 35:24]: Yeah, fair play, fair play. Tanner, listen, this has been really interesting. I've got to the sort of the stage of the conversation where I need to ask you for a question before I forget and get too engrossed in the whole testing ideology. So this is where I like to ask guests for a question for me. I take that question, I then cut out that little segment from the video, we put it on social media and answer it. So what is your question for me, good sir?

Tanner Holt [35:24 - 35:27]: You know, you said you started in what, 2002, was that right?

Matt Edmundson [35:27 - 35:28]: That's correct, yeah. Yeah.

Tanner Holt [35:28 - 35:37]: What would you do if you were now starting in 2024? Is it drop shipping, ecommerce, affiliate marketing? Where would you start if you were someone new?

Matt Edmundson [35:37 - 36:15]: Very good question. Very, very good question. I don't know the answer to and I'm going to post it on social media. If you want to know how I would start all over again here in 2024 and what I would do. Come follow me on social mediaEdmundson, on Instagram and LinkedIn and you will see the answers there shortly, I have no doubt. Tanner, listen, this has been a really fascinating conversation. Where do you see it going? What does the next year or so look like for optimization, for growth driven design, for testing? What are some of the things on the horizon that we should be paying attention to?

Tanner Holt [36:16 - 36:55]: I'm going to hit that beaded drum that's getting hit is AI. AI is everywhere. It's coming in. It's being a lot more sophisticated. I know a year ago I would never run a site through an audit, but now I will. Right. I still think there's a human touch to it because it's definitely not perfect. But seeing how to use AI is going to be something that's going to be really important. You know, you're seeing a lot of people that are doing a lot of testing, focus groups, you know, the way you can produce your content now is a lot quicker. Building your tests, building your web pages. You know, I think AI is going to be a big factor in that. The nice thing.

Matt Edmundson [36:55 - 36:56]: Go on.

Tanner Holt [36:56 - 37:42]: I was just going to say the nice thing is by our psychology, humans, on a psychological level, we don't change. So if you don't know enough of that yet, that's where I would dig in. I think it was. Was it Jeff Bezos? He said, and maybe it was from Atomic Habits. I was reading, but someone said, you know, you don't look for what's going to change. You look for what's not going to change. No one's not going to want their package slower. They're always going to want that one thing. If you look at Amazon, that's what's really there. So what is that thing that's not going to change? Buyer psychology. Try not to get distracted by all those shiny, you know, gems that are out there. There's so many tools out there, even in AI. Seems like there's a new AI tool every single day.

Matt Edmundson [37:42 - 37:45]: That's so true. Yeah. They send me all the emails to.

Tanner Holt [37:46 - 37:54]: Focusing on the root of again, the problem and the identity and that Buyer psychology. If you can master that, you'll be good at anything.

Matt Edmundson [37:54 - 39:12]: I think that's such top advice. Tanner. I'm not going to lie. I think I'm a big fan of. I call it old school. Right? Old school marketing techniques. Like one of the best marketing books you'll ever read is the if you're regular to the show, you'll have heard me say this before is the how to make friends and influence people book. Right. Just understand people and you'll be okay. Biopsychology. Understand biopsychology, how it works, why it works, and spend a lot of time there before you start looking at the ins and outs of how to run a TikTok shop. Right. It's just my opinion and maybe cause I'm a bit old school myself, other people may agree, but I think you're right. I think the things that don't change are those kind of things, you know, story storytelling has become a bit of a fad recently again. I mean, it was a fad a few years ago, then it's sort of come back and everybody's talking about I've got to be a great storyteller. You've always had to be a great storyteller. We're telling stories now thousands of years old. Because stories work, right? It's just. It is what it is. So why would you change it. And getting your head around that, I think super important. So top advice, Tanner. I like that. The question I was going to ask that I was curious about is on AI tools, are you using anything at the moment that you think this is actually quite fun or quite useful or quite interesting?

Tanner Holt [39:12 - 39:35]: You know, there are some tools out there that I've explored, like testing tools. Yeah. You know, intellimize has a very interesting philosophy. I believe they just got bought by some company now, I don't know who bought them, but they have a very interesting perspective into conversion rate optimization and how they're using AI. They look at more at segmentation and personalization.

Matt Edmundson [39:35 - 39:36]: Yeah.

Tanner Holt [39:36 - 40:22]: Like that would be. If I was a big, big business and had all the money in the world to play with. That's where I would look as far as, like, people at the beginning, just getting started, man. I'm just a classic chatgpt open AI. Like, I know I'm not unlocking its potential, so why go to get distracted by something else? Yeah, I think just learning that really well. There's a lot with images. I think that would be the next thing that I would look at from AI. Canva's AI that they've updated and that's been really helpful. Inside Canva. I know it seems like almost everything you go. Because it's such a buzzword these days, everyone's adding some AI. I think I was studying Spanish today and now DuoLingo is using AI.

Matt Edmundson [40:23 - 41:30]: Everyone's using every man and their dog. Although it's not technically AI, is it? If you go by its truest definitions. But it's. It's a. It's. It is. I do like to ask what tools people are using, but I'm with you. I. The tools I use the most. Chat GPT, Claude, I use a lot. I use Claude for copy more than ChatGPT. Claude's quite an interesting one. And Perplexity, I just think they've revolutionised search in many ways for me and I think it's really, really clever. I really like Perplexity, but then that's just me and they tend to be the three that I stick with. There are more. There is a whole bunch of stuff out there, but like you, I'm kind of like these three will do most of what it is I need them to do, really. I actually like the fact that, you know, we've got an acquisitions, an investment company where we partner and get involved with E Com businesses. And actually I quite like the fact I can just upload accounts to ChatGPT and say, right, you know the kind of thing that I'm looking for. Tell me what you think about this. I go away five minutes later, it's got a full report. You're kind of like, this is just unbelievable. Unbelievable what it can do.

Tanner Holt [41:30 - 41:54]: My new thing has been, I became a personal trainer on the side. Just, you know, staring at a computer all day. You need that human interactions. Okay, a spin class. Yeah, that GPT is just writing it all and it can get it down to the second. Hey, incredible. Where am I? I don't want it just on the chorus, I want it to go with the beats. But it saved me so many times with building playlists. It's. Yeah, it's amazing what it does.

Matt Edmundson [41:55 - 42:40]: I never would have thought to do that. I actually, I have one of those peloton bikes and I know we're going off piste here, it's not about ecommerce, just it is what it is. But I have a, I have a gym at the house and I've got one of those peloton bikes inside it and I have to be honest with you, it's a recent thing. I, I bought it secondhand because there's no way I was ever going to pay full price for one of those things. That's ridiculous. Peloton, if you're listening, it's just ridiculous what you're charging. Please get a grip. But I did pay. I paid, I think about a third of the price, which seemed a bit more sensible. But the. I really, really like those spin classes. I'd never, I'm 50 years old, never did a spin class my whole life and now I do three of them a week. They're just fantastic. So I get the reason why you enjoy that. They're just good fun.

Tanner Holt [42:40 - 42:50]: Yeah. No, and I mean AI, you know a little known secret that I'd go, here you go, all you fitness enthusiasts is don't get a personal trainer, just ask Chat GPT.

Matt Edmundson [42:51 - 42:51]: Yes.

Tanner Holt [42:51 - 43:14]: Give it the right prompt, you know some programmes and say go look at these news article circles that you trust. And that can be your personal trainer right there. I know I've seen some really cool expensive apps there that'll monitor your body. But yeah, we just need the basics. But that's what I ended up using to save myself. Instead of handwriting a programme for some people, I just plug it into chat. Ten minutes.

Matt Edmundson [43:14 - 43:38]: All right. I am the same way. I've cancelled all the subscriptions and I just go to ChatGPT and say, right, this is a workout schedule. Give me a nutrition Schedule. It's unbelievable. It is. But anyway, I digress. Tana, listen, I'm aware of times we could talk about AI all night. How do people reach you? How do they connect with you? If they want to know more, maybe get you involved in what they're doing, what's the best way to do that?

Tanner Holt [43:38 - 44:09]: Yeah, so LinkedIn is a really good way. I'm on Fiverr as well. You just look up Tanner Holt on Fiverr if you're kind of those entry stages. But you can also just reach out to my agency, mach7onlinemarketing.com. The joys of making your company in high school and not changing the branding. So marketing. But the domain is mach7onlinemarketing. And whenever I give someone my email, it's a mouthful. So one of these days when I'm not too lazy, maybe I should change it.

Matt Edmundson [44:10 - 44:11]: Why bother?

Tanner Holt [44:12 - 44:19]: That's what I look at. The branding works. At least it's not blitzkrieg. That's what it was gonna be. No one identified with that.

Matt Edmundson [44:19 - 44:30]: Yeah, yeah, Mach 7 is much better. You see, I. Whenever I hear phrases like Mach 7, being a child of the 80s, I just have Maverick and Goose in my head going. I feel the need for speed. Right. I just.

Tanner Holt [44:31 - 44:36]: And that's what I've developed all my branding around. Momentum testing. It works.

Matt Edmundson [44:37 - 44:38]: Yeah. Well, keep going, keep going.

Tanner Holt [44:38 - 44:39]: Fix it.

Matt Edmundson [44:40 - 44:52]: Exactly, exactly. Although you should test, obviously. Tanner, listen, thank you for coming on the show, man. Genuinely appreciate it. Lovely to meet you and thank you for all of your insight. It has been a real treat, my friend.

Tanner Holt [44:53 - 44:55]: Perfect. Thank you for having me, Matt.

Matt Edmundson [44:55 - 46:16]: Well, what a great conversation. That was brilliant, wasn't it? Of course we'll link to Tanner, his website, his LinkedIn profile and his Fiverr and all that sort of good stuff in the show notes, which you can get for free on the website at ecommercepodcast.net if you're on the newsletter, they'll be coming in the newsletter and of course on your podcast app to scroll down. Cause they'll be there as well. You can click straight from that. So do go and connect with Tanner. Do say hi. I'm sure he would love to hear from you. Now be sure to follow the Ecommerce Podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we've got some more great conversations lined up and of course, I just don't want you to miss any of them. I just don't. And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first. You are awesome. Yes. You are created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. I've got to bear it. Tanner's got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. Now, the E Commerce podcast is produced by Pod Junction. Our theme music was written by Edmundson Edmondson. And of course, you can find our entire archive of episodes on your favourite podcast app. And as I mentioned, all of the good stuff to do with the show can be found on website at ecommerce [email protected] but that's it from me. That's it from Tanner. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye for now. It.