Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to another episode of the Creator Central podcast.
Today we're discussing what to focus on. Sarah was just asking and I said, let's do a podcast. Why not? She was asking, do we focus on, in terms of what we're going to do in the next 2 hours, do we focus on menu items on the website, reorganizing the menu or flows for emails, automatic flows set up in Shopify to send to potential customers, existing customers, and the like to increase sales?
Well, my response would be, menu items are gonna. The goal with any design, or most design updates on Shopify on the front end would be to increase conversion rate, right, Sarah or no.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Yeah, but talk through your initial thought process.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: My initial response is that we should focus on flows because flows, even though, even though items would increase conversion or that's at least the goal, I didn't think that it would be substantial enough to beat out the increase in revenue from flows because that would be pretty immediate. If you're not sending flows or you have a gap in flows, you could be sending, for example, if you're missing an abandoned Cartae email flow, then you're missing out on potential revenue. So you need to be sending your cart reminders saying, hey, you know, you left this in your cart to get people back on the site to go ahead and order the cart that they left. So in my opinion, flows are going to be the focus. What we focus on first because they're going to generate the most revenue. And I like to look at this, you know, with every task when it comes to marketing. And I think it's a good framework, you know, when you're managing your store, to prioritize either what's broken, you know, first, I mean, if the website's down, that's, that's first and foremost. But if it's normal operations, then, you know, prioritizing, obviously, your customers, but what's gonna generate more sales and if it's a, you know, bottom of the totem pole task that is going to have very minimal impact on sales, what's the point, you know, in doing that when you have, you know, bigger fruit to go after and can work on things that are going to increase sales faster. But Sarah, what was your opinion on it?
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought that was interesting because my initial response was to target the menu first because it's more of a pain point for the customers. And so they're not even able to get to say, we're running an abandoned cart flow. They're not going to add anything to their cart to even get to the flow because they can't operate on the menu yet.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: Right. Which is a good point is which I kind of agree with. If your menu is at the point where it's so bad that people don't even make it to the cart, people get so frustrated with the menu that they open the website, go to the menu to try to find something that they're looking for and can't find it, then they're just going to leave. But if you have a decent menu, and I would say a good indicator is your conversion rate, you know, if you have a decent conversion rate already, then.
And decent, I would say, you know, it depends on your situation, where you've been at in the past, what you know, you can be at. But you know, for most people, 3% is good or 3% or better is good and under that needs work.
So, you know, if you have a terrible conversion, then yes, the menu should be your focus and any other design updates you can make to get your conversion up should be the focus because that impact most likely drive more in sales than a flow would.
But if you have a pretty good conversion, say, above 3%, then, you know, in my opinion, you should focus on your flows because that's revenue that you're missing out on with your good conversion rate already. And it's not like people are getting too, too frustrated or else you wouldn't have a conversion rate above 3%. So, you know, I think that's a good indicator to look at. But you're totally right, sir.
Focusing on flows when your menu is awful, you know, or your menu needs a lot of work where people are totally getting lost and not being able to find the items that they were looking for, especially if they came from an ad, is why would you run ads to your website if people can't even navigate your website unless you're sending them directly, you know, the product that was running in the ad. But a lot of times we like to send them to a collection so they still have to find it. Hopefully it's, you know, high up in the collection. But, you know, sometimes we also send to the homepage so people can navigate themselves and find whatever they want. But if you have a terrible menu, they're not going to find it.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
So it really kind of situates itself as being even more important than ads if your website, you know, if you have nothing to show for it, 100%.
[00:05:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It's like, you know, you shouldn't be running ads if your conversion is terrible unless your return on ads is so good that it still makes sense, you know, and your return being, you know, what you're getting back for every dollar spent. So if that calculation makes perfect sense for you and do you have enough to cover ads, cover your costs and generate a profit, then I would say keep running ads and keep growing while working on your conversion rate. But if your conversion rate is so bad that your return on ad spend is awful, then turn it off and focus on your conversion first. And then ads are going to perform that much better and have a higher return on ad spend. Your conversion has a direct impact on return on ad spend. And then once you fix your conversion, then you can scale as long as conversion stays consistent and holds stable. And if it does, that's a really good spot to be at to be in because then you can predict x amount of increase in spend is going to generate a similar increase in sales, then go for it. But if it doesn't make sense, focus on your website first. Focus on your flows. How can you generate more revenue from your current user base, from new and existing customers and who you know are already interested in your brand? How can you get more out of them to help get that return on ad spend up or in a time where you're optimizing, making updates to be in a healthier spot before ramping up or spending more money?
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: You should only run ads if most all things are in check. Everything doesn't have to be in check. You can definitely work on them as you skill ads. But generally speaking, it makes sense to tackle that. And your return is your driving check. Your return tells you how you're doing.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: Yeah. A way to think about it is like if a store was a brick and mortar store and they were about to open up for their grand opening, they wouldn't do that before. They wouldn't invite a ton of people in when they're still in the setting up process, when they don't have clothes on the racks and all of their things in place.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: That's a great example.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: And it kind of goes the same way of your website.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: That's a great example. Yeah. You're not going to invite people into your store if your store's not ready for people to see it. And obviously it's going to come to crunch time and you're going to have to open the store on the grand opening date. And there may be things where you look at the store and you say it's pretty good, but it's not perfect. That's kind of where you want to be with your website, too, and your branding and your brand as a whole before you turn on the fuel to grow it, that it running ads and reaching more people, having more people check out your website that you've worked so hard on. But if the work hasn't been put in, don't run ads. Put it in first, and then your ads will be that much more successful. That can be the difference between profitable and not with running ads. And a lot of brands will get discouraged if they run ads too soon or spend too much too early when their conversion rate isn't there or their website's just not there yet. They have a high bounce rate on the site. People are coming to the site and immediately leaving because it takes too long to load. So they don't get those things fixed. First they run ads, and then they say ads don't work. I don't believe in ads. You know, I'm not gonna advertise anymore. No, I'm not doing it. Facebook ads. Nah, don't believe in it. They just had a bad experience because they weren't ready. They opened the doors before, you know, their clothes were put out, before they had their shelves stocked.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: Yeah, you need to go to the root of the problem before you can address the branches.
So the root of the problem isn't the Facebook ads. But with that being said, you know, a theme on our podcast is to just start. And so if you are in an earlier stage of building your business, don't wait till your website's, like, completely perfect and everything is exactly how you'd want it to be. It's better to get it up with some, you know, maybe design things that you want to fix as long as everything else is working, but don't let it, like, paralyze you from moving forward.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Very true. Which is what I was saying about return. Your return on ad spend. So, you know, if you get started and you, like, I would say in that situation, like, you know, getting started, just getting going. You've never done ads before. I would say start smaller.
You know, take half of what you want to spend and spend that first, knowing that you may lose it all because you're going to have to learn.
But that'll give you a good indication on how it's going to perform. If you start out and say you spend $1,000 and it generates $2,000 in sales, that's pretty good for just starting out. That's a two to one return on ads. If you spend $1,000 and get zero sales, don't spend a single dollar more until you fix your website and you get it closer to perfect in your eyes. But you are not always the customer. So running ads can help you learn what's wrong. People will also tell you in the comments, people will reach out, people will contact your support email, say, hey, this is broken. Hey, I tried to order and this happened. Yeah, hey, I couldn't add something to my cart. You know that running ads, reaching more people can be a good testing period for you to also learn, you know, what you need to focus on what you need to fix.
But it also could be, well, a pat on the back, you know, hey, we spent 1000 to do 2000 in sales. Let's optimize these ads and get it to be. We spend 1000 to do 3000 in sales. And if you're profitable there, even if your conversion rate is not exactly where you want it to be or your site is not as perfect as you want it to be, if you're profitable there, why wouldn't you keep spending and keep growing as long as you can keep the inventory in, you know, and you're profitable and cash flow positive, keep at it, keep going.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good point.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: But if you've done everything, you have really good content on social, on your website, you have good product images, good descriptions, reviews, you know, a really fast loading website.
It's visually pleasing, like you've got everything and your conversion rate is still terrible and you go out and you run ads and it's still terrible and you've reached more people, you've increased your traffic tremendously to the website and you're still getting limited sales and a low conversion rate, you might need to lower your price. And if you do that and you're still getting a low conversion rate, like, I hate to say it and it's a harsh reality, but your product may not be winning with the market. You know, you might have gone out on a limb and it's, you know, some sort of unique gadget for a unique market or you're missing your target market. That could be the case.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: That was my thought.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: You know, instead of it being a product issue is maybe nothing targeted or framed in the way that would attract the right market.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Which, you know, could be true too, is, you know, you have good ads but they need to be tailored more to your specific audience and you're going too broad and you need to be, you know, more targeted in who you're reaching and what your message is to find those buyers if they're out there whereas if you have a conversion rate at all, it's winning with somebody. So optimize, see if you can get it up. If not, you know, fix your targeting and find the right audience that are similar to the people who are purchasing. Even if it's a small portion of people, you can probably find more. You know, it's like your growth opportunity is if your conversion rate is 1%, how do you find people just like those 1% that are purchasing? Because they obviously are confident enough and like your product enough to order. Cool. Well, that was a lot of info, it seems.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: I feel like it. I think that it addresses a lot of different people's concerns, and it'd be good. I think we answered a lot of questions, so if there's anything that we didn't answer, let us know.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: And we'll cover it in the next one.
