Matt Edmundson (00:00)

Well, hello, my name is Matt Edmundson and you are listening to the eCommerce Podcast. Now I have been an e-commerce since 2002, which in e-commerce years is a really long time, bit of a dinosaur in some respects. But these days I partner with e-commerce brands to help them grow, scale and exit. And if you'd like to know more about how that works, we'll just head over to the website for this podcast, e-commercepodcast.net. Follow the links and we'll chat.

but today I am joined by the man himself, the myth, the legend DJ. How are we doing my friend? How's life in that very bright blue background going on?

DJ Sprague (00:43)

Splendid. It couldn't be better. If I was going to be better, I'd be you,

Matt Edmundson (00:46)

Hahaha

See now that is an answer to that question, which I'm gonna definitely steal love that if I was gonna be any better I'd be you I love that. I'm totally stealing that. Thank you for that

DJ Sprague (00:58)

My second

favorite is, if I had your money, I'd burn mine.

Matt Edmundson (01:01)

Ha

Do know what my favourite answer to this question is when people say, how are doing? And I'm like, well, listen, I used to say, I've got to be doing all right when I'm this good looking. And my wife, a few months ago, and I've been saying this for decades, DJ, when I used to actually was good looking until I became an old man. my wife recently corrected me and said, you're not allowed to say that. So I said, well, what am I, what am I allowed to say? She said to me, said,

You can say, I've got to be doing all right when I'm married to such a hot wife. So I use that a lot, especially when Sharon's around, even when she's not around, to be fair. And so that's why probably been married 27 years. well. Legend. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. our wives have not killed us yet, which is always a beautiful thing. It surprises me every day.

DJ Sprague (01:36)

perfect. Okay, I love that one.

Fantastic. I've been 31, so give credit where credit's due, my friend. To your beautiful wife.

Matt Edmundson (02:02)

DJ, listen, I would have killed me by now, but no, not you. You are a woman of immense patience and grace, which is just wonderful. So DJ, apart from the fact you've been married over 30 years, which congratulations by the way, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

DJ Sprague (02:02)

I'm alive!

You too.

Well, by the color of my beard, I've been around a while. I've been a little ahead of you, my friend. Yeah. I've been marketing, advertising, sales PR for well over 35 years. Started out with B2B enterprise sales with Eastman Kodak when they were a big thing. I've been in automotive marketing for

Matt Edmundson (02:26)

Yeah, I'm getting there, I'm catching up.

Mm-hmm.

DJ Sprague (02:49)

For a long time, I started out doing reputation management in the early 90s as an agency working with JD Power and Associates. And then went on working with Toyota, Hyundai, Lexus, a lot in the automotive space because of the reviews that I was doing with JD Power, consulting, ghost writing, speaking, et cetera. And I've started my own agencies, three different agencies. I've been, no one is never enough.

Matt Edmundson (02:58)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

one is never enough.

DJ Sprague (03:19)

You just gotta keep going because you need more pain and torture and you know, it's like I didn't learn the first time, maybe three times the charm.

Matt Edmundson (03:25)

Yeah.

Love that. Love, love, love that. So you've got your three agencies.

DJ Sprague (03:30)

Yeah.

been doing PR and advertising reputation management strictly almost since 2015. Took over CMO of a big national franchise and they had a 1.2 average star rating and turned that around to a 4.3 in less than a year. And sales went up, revenue, traffic, conversions, everything gets better with positive reputation.

Matt Edmundson (03:52)

well done.

DJ Sprague (04:00)

So I started writing a book about it, didn't finish it. And then I joined Shopper Approved and the founder and CEO, Scott Brandley and I were talking one day and said, let's write a book. So we wrote Reputation King, which I'm super proud of. And it is the first and only book on e-commerce reputation management. It's a real book with 91 full color grass charts, images, et cetera, 291 pages.

And yeah, it's a phenomenal project and it really kind of cracks open the true ins and outs of online reputation management. How to do it, the strategies, the techniques, the tools, why to do it, how to do it, when to do it, where to do it. And it's a expose, if you will, on e-commerce reputation management.

Matt Edmundson (04:33)

Mm.

Mm.

You know what, that's, that's well, firstly, congratulations on the book because I, I'd like you have started a book many times. and I've yet to finish my e-commerce, mag, what do they call it? The Magnus Opus. I I've yet to finish that. so I am in awe of anyone that has actually completed that, but I think that's why I do podcasting because it's just a lot easier than writing a book. so well done on doing that, but I'm, I'm reputation management is one of those things that.

DJ Sprague (05:12)

Ha

Matt Edmundson (05:21)

If I was to, you know, sort of put in buckets, the conversations I've had around e-commerce over the years and size those buckets, obviously a big bucket would be email marketing, Facebook ads, Google ads. And then over here, there's a little tea cup that we like to drink tea from in England. That's the one where reputation management has come in. So I've been really looking forward to this conversation.

Let's start with the obvious question, DJ. What is reputation management? What do you mean by that? Let's just clarify terms.

DJ Sprague (05:56)

Yeah, absolutely. First of all, it's a bucket, not a teacup. Let's just get that straight. Reputation management is really creating and syndicating reviews across the web. Seller ratings now called store ratings by Google, right? They always change the names. So seller or store ratings, product reviews, and getting those syndicated to Google and Bing, and then also sending a portion of those reviews to

Matt Edmundson (05:59)

You

Mm-hmm.

Thank you Google. Yeah, yeah,

DJ Sprague (06:25)

dozens of third party review websites. So for example, Chopper approved, whom I am with, we have our own microsite for each brand to display their seller video and product reviews on. And then you've got very popular in England, Trustpilot. You've got reviews IO, you've got a better business bureau, which is big in the U S I don't think it exists in the UK. You've got reseller ratings, et cetera.

Matt Edmundson (06:29)

Yep.

DJ Sprague (06:54)

There's over a dozen open review platforms and these review platforms are search optimized for organic search results for a search like abc.com, abc.com reviews or product reviews. Now those product and seller ratings or store ratings also need to show up in your Google shopping paid and organic. They also need to show up in your Google ads. They need to show up in your social media channels. That is reputation management.

Matt Edmundson (06:54)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

you

DJ Sprague (07:24)

Why is that reputation management? Because we did our own survey, 600 US adults, which gave us a 98 % confidence factor in the results. And what it found was that two thirds of adults will look at multiple review platforms. So they're looking for that trifecta. They typically don't believe just one source. They want to look at two or three sources because they want to make sure that you're not gaming the system. And let's say, for example,

Matt Edmundson (07:43)

Yeah.

Yeah.

DJ Sprague (07:53)

you're looking at abc.com and you're doing a search for is abc.com legit, which is a very popular search term. In fact, if you look at your Google search console, you'll typically see that in the top 10. And you see a 1.2 on let's say Trustpilot and you see a 1.6 on Better Business Bureau or a 1.5 on Reseller Ratings, a 1.7 on

Matt Edmundson (08:03)

You

Mm-hmm.

DJ Sprague (08:21)

Google My Business and then you see a five star on ABC.com. What are you going to think? Right? Yeah, it's fraud. It's manipulated. It's what we call review gating where a lot of review platforms allow you to delete all of the negative reviews and only show the positive reviews. Well, as a Google review partner, which we are, you can't do that. You can. You have to display every single review so you're not gaming and manipulating because it's false advertising.

Matt Edmundson (08:27)

Mm-hmm. yeah, that fruits this. Yeah

Mm.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

DJ Sprague (08:50)

Quite

honestly, and you can be sued for that in the States. if you delete negative reviews and only show positive reviews, that's false advertising. yeah. Lots of companies have been sued for that because people are making a buying decision based on the information you're providing. It's just like saying it's waterproof when it isn't. It floats when it doesn't, that's false advertising. So just displaying positive reviews and deleting negative reviews is in the same vein. So in any case.

Matt Edmundson (08:57)

really? Okay.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

DJ Sprague (09:19)

Reputation management in our book, in our definition, really means making sure that you have positive reviews across the web, organic and paid. We have a tool called review destinations that allows you to send a percentage of reviews to all the review platforms so that you can do true reputation management. If you just buy reviews on TrustPilot, you just subscribe to TrustPilot, you only get reviews on TrustPilot. But if you have a review destinations tool,

Matt Edmundson (09:35)

Mm-hmm.

DJ Sprague (09:48)

that we offer you can send reviews to Trustpilot, Better Business Bureau, Google My Business, or Google Business Profile, your own website, Site Jabber, et cetera. And then of course, getting your store reviews and product reviews in Google and Bing, because you've got to have multiple touch points because people don't trust a single source. They want multiple sources of truth. And that's how we define reputation management, making sure that

Matt Edmundson (09:54)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

DJ Sprague (10:18)

you're putting your true, accurate and best foot forward. Now the reality is a lot of people are afraid of collecting and displaying all reviews, including negative. Well, if you're a good store, a good company, a good service provider and you have good products, the reality is by collecting reviews from everybody, you're going to have a much higher average star rating. Why? Because the reason you're in business is because you provide a good product and a good service. And that's going to be reflected in your reviews.

If, you do not collect reviews from everybody and you allow people to on their own volition, leave reviews, who's going to leave a review? The people that are mad, right? So if you go and do a Google search right now for Nike dot com reviews, you're going to see that they actually have terrible reviews for Nike dot com. Well, we all know Nike is a stellar brand. It's the number one brand in the category. yet on, you know, let's say Trustpilot, for example.

Matt Edmundson (10:57)

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

DJ Sprague (11:16)

They have like a 1.4. Why? Because only the people that are upset go there and leave a review on their own volition. If you're happy, you don't do it. But if you make it easy for people, post checkout, post receipt of the product and make it easy for them to leave a review, the happy people, the ecstatic people, the brand advocates, the brand ambassadors, and the people that are a little bit upset are also going to leave a review. But the truth is the average is going to be very high, usually a 4.7 to 4.8.

Matt Edmundson (11:22)

Leave the review. Yeah.

do.

DJ Sprague (11:44)

So that is also reputation management, making sure that you collect reviews from all of your customers and then displaying those reviews across the web. So regardless of where they go, they're going to see a good number of reviews and an accurate reflection of your brand.

Matt Edmundson (12:00)

Okay, there's a lot there DJ. I'm bad making lots of notes. I like this so reputation management. We're collecting reviews from everybody. We're making it easy and we're displaying them across all platforms on the web. Sounds simple, doesn't it really is just piece of cake. was thanks for coming on the show. It's, it's interesting, isn't it this because

DJ Sprague (12:19)

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (12:25)

We've gone as with our own e-comm businesses, right? We've gone back and forth on a lot of these types of things where I'm gonna pick on Trustpilot a little bit because it is a quite a well-known one in the UK. And we were with Trustpilot for a few years as a business collecting reviews. were definite advantages to doing this with Trustpilot. I can't say that there wasn't.

Did find what the marketing team did find though, that it was clunky and it was a nightmare because a lot of people mistook the review emails for customer service emails. And so you'd get a lot of really odd reviews on there. The ones that always amused me were the ones that left you a one star rating, but then in the description said, these guys are amazing. It's like, could you change that? And of course they're like, well, why would I want to judge? don't mean it's, it becomes problematic.

The thing which has always intrigued me with Trustpilot is just the sheer amount of money they charge to collect the reviews. It is obscene amounts of money to the point where after two years, they wanted to charge us thousands every month. I'm like, there's just no way I can justify this to myself, let alone anybody else. so we ended up leaving Trustpilot and I think

So I get the statement about reviews and I think we do need them. Maybe you can speak to this because I've got experience with things like TrustPilot.

What's the state of the review gatherers, if I can call them that? The software that you can use to get the reviews. What's the state of that market at the moment in your opinion? Now, I know in some respects there's a slight bias here, because I know you're involved in it, but I appreciate that thing actually, you're going to tell me the truth and what you think is going on in that industry.

I get that we need reviews, but let's deal with the frustration people have of using these kind of platforms.

DJ Sprague (14:40)

Yeah,

yeah, that's a great question. So I'm to be as unbiased as I possibly can. We are a bootstrap privately held company, always have been. We started out in 2010, bootstrapped, still bootstrapped in 2015. TrustPilot has taken public money and therefore they have to answer to who? Their shareholders.

Matt Edmundson (14:52)

Mm-mm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

DJ Sprague (15:04)

And they keep increasing their prices without increasing their value or their product or their service, because they're trying to pay off, right. the debt they've incurred and make the shareholders happy. So that's a fundamental issue. there are several that have gone that route. They've taken on VC money, or gone public. And I've been on the VC side. So I've been in with two different companies that, were acquired by venture capital.

Matt Edmundson (15:23)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

DJ Sprague (15:34)

And I've seen the same pattern both times where we had to cut corners to increase net profits and gross revenue to satisfy the investors. And that's just the way the game is played. How else do you pay them back? How else do you make the investors happy? You have to increase because you've taken on huge hundreds of millions of dollars in debt and debt service with hundreds of millions of dollars.

Matt Edmundson (15:40)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

DJ Sprague (16:04)

Is expensive. How do you do that? Raise prices. Right. Cut overhead. So that's just the way it works. How else do you achieve that? So that's a fundamental issue. And I'm not trying to pick on TrustPilot, but the reality is they haven't improved the product in years. We are almost our number one source of new business is TrustPilot defectors.

Matt Edmundson (16:05)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

That would not surprise me in the least.

DJ Sprague (16:34)

Right. As

Matt Edmundson (16:34)

It would not.

DJ Sprague (16:35)

you just said, right, they wanted to charge thousands of dollars a month. You need reviews. You have to have reviews. Northwestern University, in partnership with the Spiegel Research Center, did studies. I'm sure you read this is famous study, but they found that if you have five product reviews, you will increase your conversion rate by 270 percent. If it's a high price ticket item, which is one hundred dollars or more.

Matt Edmundson (16:58)

Yeah. Yeah.

DJ Sprague (17:03)

you can increase conversion rate by 380 % by having reviews. And there's lots and lots of research, lots and lots of stats, and we've done our own. But the reality is 95 to 99 % of people are looking for reviews. Another study says that 70 % won't buy without reviews. We have our own clients that tell us they've increased conversion rate by 272%, 380%, AOV goes up, LTV goes up.

Matt Edmundson (17:07)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

DJ Sprague (17:29)

Click through rate goes through the roof when you've got review stars in your ads and organic listings. So you have to have, it's a fundamental thing. You have to have them. The question is, I would ask two questions. One, are you a Google and Bing review partner for both store and product reviews? Because you have to be a Google review partner to get your product reviews in the Google listings and obviously in your PPC ads. You've got to have.

Matt Edmundson (17:29)

Everything goes up. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

DJ Sprague (17:58)

store and product. Some review platforms are only Google partners for seller or store. Some only for product. There's only a handful that are both. You also want to have a Bing review partner because obviously you want your reviews to be syndicated to Bing. Now a lot of people forget about Bing, but the reality is they still have 5 % of the search traffic, which adds up to hundreds of millions, right? So.

Matt Edmundson (18:08)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, we make a lot of money

from Bing. I'm fully appreciative of the opportunities on Bing. Yeah.

DJ Sprague (18:27)

Absolutely.

A lot of money, a lot of traffic there. The other question you've got to ask is, will I be able to send a portion of my reviews to other review platforms? So for example, you were paying or threatened to pay thousands of dollars a month to Trustpilot. Well, what if you could get reviews, verified customer reviews on Trustpilot without paying Trustpilot? Right. How about reseller ratings? How about Site Jabber?

Matt Edmundson (18:46)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

DJ Sprague (18:56)

Better Business Bureau, et cetera. Well, that's what we created. We created a platform that allows you to send a percentage of your reviews to all these other review platforms without having to pay all those other review platforms. Third question I would ask is, you know, what's the cost? And what's the cost per review? We have about a 30 % average conversion rate on our store reviews, on our initial review, which goes to your website and the shopper approved.

Matt Edmundson (19:07)

Hmm.

DJ Sprague (19:25)

platform. So that's a very high conversion rate to collect a lot of reviews fast. And we've actually had people leave us thinking the grass is greener and then they go to a competitor and then months or a year or two later, they come back and say, man, my review collection numbers dropped. You know, I'm down like 60, 70 % over what I was collecting with you guys. So review collection rate is important. The overall monthly cost is important.

Matt Edmundson (19:46)

Yeah, yeah.

DJ Sprague (19:53)

I then take that and create what I call a cost per review, right? Because if you take your number of reviews and your total monthly costs, that's going to give you your cost per review. Now that's important. And of course, like I say, being able to distribute reviews to other platforms and syndicate to Google and Bing store and product. And of course, video reviews. You got to be able to collect video reviews because as we know, YouTube is owned by Google and Google loves YouTube and consumers love YouTube.

Matt Edmundson (20:02)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

DJ Sprague (20:21)

And if you can get your reviews to show up in those video snippets on page one from YouTube, as well as the review platforms, as well as your own review, you know, microsite and your website and Google shopping, you've now dominated page one. That's reputation management. Now your reviews are all over page one. And you're like, wow, this is a legit company because it's social proof. Dr. Childini.

Matt Edmundson (20:29)

Mm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

DJ Sprague (20:49)

wrote the book Influence and he coined the term social proof. And people are looking for that subconscious buy-in that, wow, all these other people trust like this brand, I should too. I don't need to do the research because they already did it for me. Right?

Matt Edmundson (21:02)

Hmm.

Yeah, no, that's great. That's great. Love it. I again, I've got lots of lots of questions now DJ lots of notes. So before we get into those though, let me just say that if you are in New Zealand or Australia, we are launching and depending on when this comes out, actually, we may have already launched a little cohort group in that area. This is just where we get online once a month just to chat fellow e-commerce is no cost come join us.

It's very late in the night for me. It's gonna be very early in the morning for you guys But that's the way it is when we're on the opposite sides of the world But it's gonna be fun nonetheless if you'd like to know more about Australia New Zealand cohort then come and join us if you'd like to obviously know more information about The UK and US one as well. Let us know just go to the website ecommerce podcast net or better yet Find me on LinkedIn and send me a direct message and I will send you the links for the cohort stuff now

This idea then that conversion rate matters, obviously, conversion rate always matters, doesn't it DJ, in the sense that I'm obsessed with my conversion rate on the website when people buy stuff. So I'm intrigued with this idea of conversion rates on reviews, as in the emails that you send out or the messages that you send out asking for reviews. And you guys are getting on average 30 % more. Is that a...

Is that a UI thing? Is that because your platform just looks so much better? Is it because it's a bit more intuitive? Have you figured out the questions a bit more? I'm curious how your conversion rate is so much higher.

DJ Sprague (22:43)

Yeah, good, good question. So the reason our initial survey for the store rating is so high is because we ask for that survey immediately post checkout. So everyone left the site yet and they're to get a survey request. They're already online. There's nothing else they need to do. They don't need to open an email. They don't need to look at a text. It's right there. And so, yeah.

Matt Edmundson (23:07)

It's the perfect time to ask, isn't it really? Because

they're more likely to say yes at this point. I guess depending on how many questions you ask them, I get bored after three and I'm off. But yeah, I get it.

DJ Sprague (23:18)

Yeah, we,

and we, we advocate only three questions, right? Some clients only ask one, but three is about right. Exactly. But that's the best time because they're already there. They've got their fingers on the keyboard, or on the phone and it's super simple, super easy. Done. Right. So we average about.

Matt Edmundson (23:21)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And also I

think there, they're a big fan of you, aren't they? Because they've just gone and spent however much, whatever your average order value is, 70 bucks, whatever it is. They're a big fan of you at this point. You've not let them down yet and they're excited about what their purchase is going to be. So psychologically, I think they're obviously in quite a favorable mind at this point.

DJ Sprague (23:56)

That's right. I call it under the ether, right? They're still excited. They're optimistic. They're looking forward to getting their product, solving the problem, know, whatever it is they're trying to do, why they went to your website in the first place. Now we then follow up with an email, which is what we call the full survey. And the full survey allows the consumer now to change their initial survey and add more information because now they got the product and they've actually had it fulfilled.

Matt Edmundson (23:58)

Yeah.

Mm.

DJ Sprague (24:25)

Or they can just, no, I'm good, let's leave it. They also at that point can leave a product review and a video review. So with a single request email, they're able to either update or expand their seller rating or their store review and a product review and a video review all at once. So it makes it very easy to do all three.

Matt Edmundson (24:27)

Yep. Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I like these sort of things. I've seen a lot of them actually. we use one, well, I think we're about to change. think we currently use one called testimonial for the podcast where we say to guests who have been on the show, just leave us a quick review and it, and you can do text, you can do video. It's just a simple, easy all in one capture platform. And I, can see that. Making a lot more sense, especially as video is a lot easier to capture now. you know, with the state of the phone and, and, and all that sort of stuff.

One of the things that intrigued me actually, as I was listening to you talk, I was asked to review which website? ThruDoc. So I'm a bit of a ThruDoc fan. They're a clothing brand here in the UK. And they sent a request to me to review a purchase that I'd made. Which I was more than happy to do because I am in fact a fan. I didn't do the review in the end because it just kept going and going and going. so it, and it annoyed me. The more questions it asked me, the more it annoyed me.

I don't know if this is just me being weird, because I appreciate the older I get, the less tolerance I have for this kind of nonsense. Whether this is actually a good practice that I see, you know, that I see more and more now people ask you, you click five stars, and then it takes you to page and it wants you to write some texts and then it wants you to do this and then it wants you to do that. I'm off, I'm out, you know, is this common practice now? Is this good practice?

I'm curious what your thinking is.

DJ Sprague (26:19)

You

know, madam with you, there is a real thing called survey burnout. And the more questions you ask, the more people burn out. I really like to say three, maybe five. Always ask the most important question first. Because then at least you get that answered. A lot of people save that, you know, most critical question to the end. That's that's wrong. That's a mistake.

Matt Edmundson (26:37)

Mm-hmm.

DJ Sprague (26:48)

So whatever you really, really, really want to know, pass it up front. And then also it's good idea to say your question two of five, three of five, four or five. So they know where they're at. I can't stand it when you're in in a survey. And I like to answer surveys because I'm in that business. Right. So it's like, okay, right. And I want to do the thing. So, but when I get a survey and you're, six questions in and you have no idea where the end is. I I'm done.

Matt Edmundson (26:50)

Mm-mm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me know where I am in the system. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you want to see what they're asking. I want to know, I want to learn. Yeah, yeah, totally.

Yeah,

DJ Sprague (27:18)

This could be 20, this could be 30. I'm not gonna do it. And most people are the same.

Matt Edmundson (27:18)

yeah, I'm out. Yeah. No, I'm with you. Yeah, I'm definitely with you. It's an interesting one because I remember that, and I'm fairly sure it was ThruDoc, and if it isn't, my apologies to ThruDoc, and this is not a slight on them, it's just the platform they've chosen for reviews. I don't think, because I sort of bailed halfway through, they couldn't...

use the bits that I'd already done, if that makes sense. It was a bit like it's an all or nothing type thing. And I felt a little bit sad for them in some respects, because I like what you say here, get the most important question done first, get that information in the system at least. And then if they bail halfway through, you've still got something you can use, right? And I looked at that and I thought, well, darn it.

DJ Sprague (28:05)

Yes.

Matt Edmundson (28:09)

through dark, should probably give you a ring because I think you could do a lot better with the review system and you're currently using. didn't, I didn't rate it. If I'm honest with you, if I was going to review the reviews, it would not be good. Yeah.

DJ Sprague (28:22)

Well, you you got to make it simple, right? mean, people

don't want complex. They don't want to time suck. They don't want to make it their life's work. They want to help you out if you've been a good brand, but they don't want to be 15 questions in.

Matt Edmundson (28:30)

Mm.

No, no, like you say, make it, it simple, isn't it? Kiss, keep it simple, stupid. And I think it's, I want to give a review. I'm the kind of guy, if I've got a good service, and I think most people are like this, I want to leave a review. You have got to ask me, because I'm not gonna think to do it automatically. So you've definitely got to ask me to give a review. You've probably got to ask me a couple of times, because the first time you asked me, I'm probably marrying the lawn, and I'm not gonna do it then. So you've probably got to ask me a couple of times.

and you've got to make it really simple for me to do it. And I think if you do that, I am more than happy to leave a review. If it strays outside those boundaries, I'm struggling a little bit. found, DJ, maybe you can speak to this, we found actually just the simple, the biggest thing that transformed our reviews. I mean, I'm going back a few years, obviously, maybe in 2006, 2007. So I appreciate it was a very different world back then.

DJ Sprague (29:16)

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (29:34)

The biggest thing that transformed our views was just simply asking to actually just go, would you mind leave, would you mind awfully if you left a review for us? And then using, I think it's the, the, the Caudini, he wrote persuasion as well, didn't I think it was Caudini. Leaving the, using that strategy, which is just give a reason for ask, if you give them a reason, you'll get much more people responding. So it's like,

DJ Sprague (29:57)

Yes.

Matt Edmundson (30:02)

Would you mind leaving this review? Cause it really helps us as we're a, you know, sort of small bootstrap business. Well, hello. That thing transformed it. Literally it was as simple as that.

DJ Sprague (30:07)

Yes.

Exactly.

Yeah, that's, that's a great point. I'm glad you brought that up. Obviously you read his book and his research, but yes, if you give people a logical reason, then the compliance or conversion rate goes way up. okay. Yeah. You're using this for research or to improve your service or improve your product. I'll help you out. Who doesn't want to do that?

Matt Edmundson (30:34)

Yeah, yeah, I've found actually, if we play around with that reason slightly, it doesn't have a massive impact, but it does have an impact if the reason that you're asking the question ties into the values of the customer that purchased it, right? So understand, this is where you need to understand your customer profile and what sets you apart as a brand. So just writing, can you leave us a review for...

customer for company research. This is a bit dull and boring for a lot of our customers. So we would say the same thing, but reword it in a way that would be fun for them. It's like, could you leave us a review? Because we're trying to decide whether or not to sack the CEO of the business. We're trying to figure out if he's doing a good job. It's just get something that's a bit more brand voice, I think.

DJ Sprague (31:20)

Yeah. Well, and if let's just say, for example, you're selling products that are green products, right? You know, low, low carbon output. Could you answer the survey so we can provide better products, you know, for the for the, you know, saving the planet, whatever it is. Right. So now you're tying into that that psyche, that underlying reason.

Matt Edmundson (31:42)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Yeah.

DJ Sprague (31:48)

why they're on your site and why they're buying your products to begin with. yeah, you get me, right? The reason I'm here is because I'm looking for green products and you want to create a better green environment. So I'm to help with the survey. know, a couple other tips that people don't think about, but I'll just share with your audience when it comes to research and surveys is don't ask personal questions upfront. Save those for the end because if you start out with

Matt Edmundson (32:01)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fantastic.

Okay.

DJ Sprague (32:16)

You know, what's your age, occupation, income, married, you know, et cetera. That's personal stuff. And that's not even usually critical, right? That's nice to have, but the nice to have at the very end, if they answer it, they answer it. But if you ask it upfront, you're to blow them out. Say, Whoa, I don't even know you. I'm not, I'm not telling you all this stuff. That's number one. And yeah, exactly. And, you know, number two.

Matt Edmundson (32:27)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

I don't tell my best friend that information. Why am going to tell you?

DJ Sprague (32:46)

is try to have as many short questions, easy questions as possible. Because if you get into really long questions that require a lot of thinking, they're not going to comply. So there's a couple of other.

Matt Edmundson (33:02)

Yeah, especially in the modern world

where we just anything that's longer than three sentences, we copy it, paste into chat GPT and say, summarize this for me, right? So you just don't, you don't want to do that with your review questions. So hang on, let me chat GPT to write this for me. That's great. Listen, if you're listening to the show and you haven't done so already, make sure you connect with us via our newsletter called the e-commerce. It's a great little newsletter.

DJ Sprague (33:11)

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (33:29)

We put in this stuff from the show. So our conversation with DJ will be in the show, but also a whole bunch of extras go in there as well, which you're not going to want to miss. Lots of tips, lots of insights. So do go and check that out at ecommercepodcast.net. We would love to send that out to you all free, of course. DJ, listen, I am aware of time. So I want to ask you for your question.

for Matt. This is a part of the show, ladies and if you don't know, if you're new to the show, firstly, warm welcome to you. This is where I ask my guests for a question, which I will go and answer on social media. So DJ, what's your question? I know you've been waiting the whole show to tell me what it is, you said, the star, I've got the question, Matt, I've got the question. So what is that question?

DJ Sprague (34:13)

I have.

Well, you've been around e-commerce since 2002. So I'm going to ask you this question of all the things you've seen, all the things you've done, tried, tested, experimented with, et cetera. What's the one thing that you think every e-commerce store should do to maximize their revenue?

Matt Edmundson (34:18)

Mm.

Okay. The one thing. Okay. I will have a think about that and I will answer that question over on LinkedIn. Come follow me, linkedin.com forward slash Matt Edmundson. think anyway, you should just search for me, Matt Edmundson. You'll find me. am there. DJ, listen, I've loved the conversation, man. And if people want to find out more about what you do, cause you, and also we, did we have this recorded when we talked about your podcast? Tell us about your podcast, what your podcast is all about.

and how people can reach you and connect with you and all that good stuff.

DJ Sprague (35:06)

Yeah, our podcast is a traffic and conversion podcast. It's officially called the e-commerce traffic and version podcast. So you can Google that. We're in all the usual places. You can also download our free book reputation king at reputationking.com. You'll also be able to download the free audio and free digital version.

just a little short form and it's all yours. You can also buy it on Amazon. You can also buy it on the ReputationKing.com website. And it's a treasure trove of insights, research, tips, strategies on really creating your brand as the reputation king in your space. And that's why we called it Reputation King. Because if you can dominate the web with positive reviews and become the reputation king in your space,

then by default you are going to get a disproportionate share of revenue and traffic.

Matt Edmundson (36:08)

love that domain name. It's sublime reputationking.com I think it's just brilliant. Have you got the merch? Have you got like a reputation king t shirt because I think that that would just make sense to me.

DJ Sprague (36:19)

That's coming. We've got hats and shirts coming. So I'm glad you asked about it.

Matt Edmundson (36:22)

Okay, when you

get a t-shirt send me one and I'll wear it on one of the podcasts. We'll just brand bash with the reputation king on the video because I just think that's such a cool name. Really, really cool. But DJ, thank you so much for joining us, man. And really appreciate you being here. Let me do this. Yes, there we go. I love having my little sound desk. But it's been great to talk to you. No problem. It's been great to meet you. It genuinely has.

DJ Sprague (36:30)

you

Thanks Matt.

Matt Edmundson (36:52)

Now DJ, we are doing this thing where at the end of the show, I appreciate we're at the end of the show now, I've got like a minute or two left. For those that are still listening, and I should have warned you about this before we started recording, but you know, I'll like impromptu, let's do it, see what happens. For those that are still listening, what is one great tip from that book that you can just quickly share with all of those that made it to the end?

DJ Sprague (37:18)

Yeah, I'll just, I'll just repeat. think one of the most important things you can do is make sure that you're distributing reviews across multiple review platforms. Because again, it helps your SEO. it helps your street cred. It helps your traffic. It helps you conversion because that's one component of becoming a reputation king. And that really should be the end goal. Collecting reviews just on your website. It's like living on an island. People will only see them.

Matt Edmundson (37:40)

Mm-hmm.

DJ Sprague (37:47)

If, if, and when they get there, but if you can distribute reviews across the web and paid and organic, multiple sites, multiple review platforms, Google, cetera. Now people will see your reviews in more places. You'll have a higher click through rate and you'll have a higher conversion rate. Now, going back to Dr. Childini, he wrote the book, pre-suasion wrote this whole chapter in another book about pre-suasion. If people see.

A lot of reviews and positive reviews across the web about your brand and products, they are persuaded to buy. So they're coming pre-converted, if you will. So it's just critical that you think about this in bigger terms than just collecting reviews on your website.

Matt Edmundson (38:20)

Yeah.

DJ, thanks man. Appreciate you. Appreciate you coming on and sharing your wisdom. Loved every minute of it. And that's it from me, ladies and gentlemen. That's it from DJ. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I will see you next time. Bye for now.

DJ Sprague (38:43)

Thanks, Matt.