Actionable Insights

Summary

Creativity takes time. Keep a creativity journal.Strive to make an emotional connection with your customers.Make sure they know that they are buying “from you” (a person or people) and not from “a website”.Vulnerability, within reason, is exceptionality important.

I think everyone enjoys a good story of an entrepreneur who has invested blood sweat and tears to make their endeavor a success. Of course, many accept capital in the process, and that accelerates growth. But, I am often more impressed by those who hold off capital as long as possible. This is one of those stories—someone who has gone from “zero to hero” and has experienced a great degree of success in the process.

Johanna Miller, Chief Artisan, PotionYarns.com

Johanna started this business with almost no money. and through her creativity, her ingenuity has built it up to a place that it’s at today. This episode will focus on the content management side of her findings, and what she’s learned over these past three years.

An example of Johanna’s work.

On a very basic level, Johanna sells dyed yarn. The challenge is you can go to your local craft store and buy yarn for $6USD. Yet, she sells it for $30USD+. The fact that she is successful proves she has a solid market differentiation strategy.

How Johanna got started

Began as a hairstylist, focusing on hair color (intricate stuff like rainbow colors, unicorn shades and galaxy hair). Joseph’s side note: I had no clue this kind of coloring is possible. Definitely artisan work here.Got into dyeing yarn through needing something custom for a project.Johanna found that her expertise in dyeing hair was not all that different than yarn.She dyed her first batch of yarn in her kitchen sink.

Like many founder’s stories, this company started with resolving a need and then scaling to help others.

However, artists have a big challenge known as “the starving artist.” Many are very creative (think musicians, painters, and craftspeople). Yet few make a reasonable living. Johanna has been successful in turning her craft into a business.

Content Strategy by Johanna

Yarn is a difficult thing to describe. There are some yarn descriptors that are objective:

What type of yarn is it?Where did it come from?How much does it cost?

At least two of those three bullet points are described on the packaging from any big box store that sells yarn.

Yet, where Johanna’s premium comes from is the subjective:

How do I describe the color?How did I come up with this color?What could this be used for?

Read this sample from her website:

What’s the best handdyed yarn for the fall season? According to Hoyle, it’s this beautiful blend of mustard gold, spicy pumpkin, blood red, and rich burgundy that calls to mind autumn leaves, pumpkin spice, and apple cider on a hayride. Edmond Hoyle was generally considered the ultimate authority on the game of whist and his book on the rules of the game were frequently consulted when settling disputes. Who are we to argue with such an authority? According to Hoyle won’t disappoint! 

This part of the description makes an emotional connection to something that we love. It tells a story of autumn. I remember playing in the leaves when I was a kid. Pumpkin spice and who would even turn down apple cider on a hayride. It’s really positive pictures.

The big question in our minds is how did this description come to life?

People want to connect when they buy products. This is especially true over the internet—which represents an impersonal medium for transactions.

We don’t just buy a product, we buy an experience, we buy a feeling, so we need something that people can connect to.Johanna Miller

Johanna wanted to create stories for her yarn because that helps people connect with her and her brand. But because most of her business takes place online, no matter how great

Summary

Ensure that you are tracking as much data as possible (HotJar, both product and brand reviews, listening to phone calls, interaction with sales people).Mine data from all sources available to learn what customers are saying is meaningful to them.Observe your competition. Not to just “be like them”, but better, what are they not doing?Put aside presuppositions and listen to all voices in your organization. It may be that they have advice that doesn’t make sense at the time, but ultimately can yield impressive savings.

On this episode, we are joined by Ethan Thompson, digital marketing manager at Simplified Safety Europe. Ethan manages eight websites—four are focused on B2C and four on B2B. As you will see, Ethan has the unique capability to zoom out on a given problem and see the big picture.

The place Ethan works, Simplified Safety, sells… (you guessed it) safety equipment. Simplified Safety specializes in products that help people get back home to their families. Businesses also need the help to ensure they are compliant with regulations thus reducing massive financial liability. It is this type of product that really does make a difference every day and could be the reason a mother or father comes home from work. Of course, there are others in this space, so Ethan has to employ every strategy to ensure that this brand does stand out in that particular field.

More leads, please!

B2B can be challenging—particularly because it often requires a hands-on approach with sales. Many B2C websites have products that work out of the box. Sure, you might need to pull instructions together or even video. Yet, B2B products are regularly custom and designed for a specific situation. How do we get through the “iron curtain” of the internet and begin an interaction to determine the fit and the right price for this installation?

What we normally do:

Make sure the “Contact Us” page works.Put popups all over the website.Maybe a chat box too?

What worked for Ethan:

Watch what people read on the page (HotJar). Many people read with their cursor, so you can “see” what they are reading.Put the information on the page that people are wanting to know. Ask the sales team to document questions they are asked.Highlight benefits (“this railing’s coating will keep you compliant longer”) rather than features (“this railing has a ABC123 certified coating”).Match your ad copy with highlights on the page.Resulted in a 50% increase in leads.

A lot of the products that Simplified Safety sells need guidance or consultation, so that can’t be just “sold online” like many B2C merchants. The problem is that getting a visitor to commit and enter their contact information. Often this is at least some level of a commitment because our inner nature thinks: “what are the risks?” OR “am I going to be spammed??” So, providing contact information can be a big ask.

This particular example is about their KeeGuard product. This is a railing that is placed on a rooftop to protect someone from falling off the roof. As you can expect, this is a highly custom product.

Simplified Safety had to provide enough information but not so much as to scare them off. They have been on an interesting journey to hone their message and figure out exactly what resonates with our customers in addition to giving them the confidence that they the right person to work with (that they aren’t some popup brand). Originally, Simplified Safety had a lot of information hidden behind buttons. You had to click a button to get to more information. A lot of the people who clicked those cards converted. They ended up requesting more information. But if someone did not click on one of the buttons, they were less likely to convert. Simplified Safety found that information that is provided in these is really important and it ma

As we have discussed quite a little in a previous episode, I want to take a look, but from a different angle to this really important question of “why would I want to buy from you?” You know very well by now that competition over the internet is crazy.

Instead of a brick and mortar store spending money on a lease, you give it to Google or Facebook in the form of ads, the developers as they build out the experience, and your employees as they keep customers happy. We aren’t here to discuss the comparison of online vs offline, but what I want to share with you is something that will apply in both scenarios. 

In a world where businesses struggle and grasp at anything they can do to set themselves apart from the competition, we look for new and fresh ideas. Yet, those new and fresh ideas can be really valuable.

I am a merchant, and love most every minute of it. About 20 years ago, I began programming, when I was 10. Feel free to do the math—yes, I may be younger than you. Close to 10 years ago, I began focusing exclusively on the online commerce platform Magento. I demonstrated my learning by passing and achieving Magento certifications. To pass this, I wrote pages and pages of notes. I began sharing this. Ultimately, thousands of people have used these materials. This provided the platform from which I began my online store and continue to grow it.

You are likely not interested in Magento certifications and that’s fine. You are interested in growing your store. I want to share my most recent findings with you.

Here’s the deal. Let’s say your boss tells you that you need to get Magento certified. Of course, the first thing you do is to go to Google and type in “how to prepare for this test”. You land on our website. Who is SwiftOtter? Why would you want to buy from them? What really is this? You rightly have a lot of questions.

What if I told you that I will keep your money only if you pass the test? Now that’s a guarantee.

I’ll turn it around to you later in this show, but here’s the first question that is on your mind: “how much money will I lose when everyone returns everything they ordered? That could entirely shut down my business!”

Yes, done incorrectly, it could. But this is my story of how this has actually helped me, and I have numbers to prove it. Will this revolutionize your business? Maybe. I will share my story and tell you how you can know for yourself.

I have experimented with two offers. I started from the beginning with a pass guarantee: you pass the test or I will return the money you paid me. Yet, until recently, I never tested to see if and how much this actually improved sales.

Let’s start by seeing how much a pass guarantee helps:

Bounce rate is 5% lower.Conversion rate is up 25%.Revenue is up 11%.For all age demographics, the conversion rate was improved.

All good numbers, right? And, the guarantee is not prominently posted. It’s part of the description but that’s it.

Why do people like a guarantee? It says a couple of things:

It says that we take our products seriously. Guarantees are tough as they most often rely on the end user’s performance: will they actually follow the instructions? Will they be reasonable? If our products are really bad, we would lose a lot of money and either drop the guarantee OR fix them up. In other words, we are putting teeth behind our value proposition.It eliminates (or reduces) the customer’s risk. They know that if this product does not perform as expected, then they will have recourse. In my case, I hope they are motivated to use the product as expected, otherwise, they are still out the test money (which ranges from $200 to $300).

My customers know that I say something, but if the product doesn’t live up to expectations, then they have recourse. They can go write a bad review, but we all would much rather our customers email us so we can resolve the problem.

We had one particular test that seemed to get more failures th

Think back to the last purchase you made online where you didn’t know the exact product you wanted. How did you come up with that? How did you make that decision? Where did you purchase it from?

Right now, I’m in the market to buy another pair of workout shoes. Buying a pair of shoes can be a crazy experience. There are so many different types of shoes, which one is right for me? It can be overwhelming. For me, when I am faced with too many choices, the temptation is to push the decision off to a later date. And the sale never happens. Maybe you can relate. Well, I’ve been through this cycle several times. And, by the way, I did settle on a pair of shoes—but not from a name brand as I like to support small businesses.

The goal for most shoe-buying websites is to help you filter results to find the perfect pair. It’s hard to communicate.

9,652 results? That’s decision paralysis (Zappos).

I’m not selling shoes, and chances are that you don’t either. Anytime I’m looking for something, I’m trying to understand my own decision-making process: what makes me settle on what I am looking for?

Skip to: 04:08 What if I can help my customers find what they are looking for, and educate them in the process?

While this idea might not work in every industry, but this is an important idea. Not only will this increase revenue and keep people on the website longer, but you and I will also be the ones educating them. That has to be at least worth something BECAUSE they are on your website right now.

Let’s look at my story on this. My online store improves people’s quality of life: more time with family, more influence in their company. How do I do that? I sell books that help people become Magento certified. I have written a course as well, and I have built banks of practice test questions so that someone can get a good idea as to how they will do when they sit for the exam. You might say, “Joseph, but you sell information on how to get certified.”

Good point. But what is the result of someone making this investment? All of the above.

As I help people become certified, the question I have given much thought to is: “how can I help someone achieve success and not failure?” The material that I write is only as good as the investment that the buyer makes on actually learning this stuff. I could write incredible material, and if you buy it but don’t take the time to learn it, that makes me look bad, because you’re upset you failed.

Look at it this way, I am aware that there are some question dumps out there for Magento certifications. They are wrong, illegitimate and unethical. However, you could purchase it and still fail because you didn’t memorize the questions.

One way that I have found helps make my customers successful is education.

How do you prepare?What do you expect on the test?What tricks can you do to get through the test?

Skip to: 07:01 This education is good, but we just missed the most important topic of all! “Which test should I take?”

Here’s why this is important. I get regular emails from people who take an advanced test and fail. As someone who has invested hundreds of hours in preparing for tests, I understand the pain in failing. The simple answer is that they should have started with an easier one and then progressed up. Not only do they now have a much better shot at passing as the easier test is about half the difficulty, based on percentages, they will get more certifications to their name.

My first solution is to build a quiz. There’s only 1-5 questions and at the end. And the great part is that this does not involve my time in answering emails. This also keeps the customer in their own context, where they don’t have to pick up the phone or open their email client and email me.

Iteration #1 on Certification landing page

The statistics:

4% of those who saw the quiz clicked on it.They spend an average of 20 seconds taking the quiz.5% increase in revenue.1

The internet has globalized tremendous opportunities. Someone in a remote village anywhere in the world (as long as they have internet) can make a living, or significantly more. With this explosion of opportunity comes many people who take advantage of it. The competition in many markets is stiff: instead of competing with the two or three jewelers in your area, you are competing with thousands of renowned jewelers across the world. And, the ultimate kicker, is if Amazon sells in the arena you compete—maybe even the same products?

My discussions with merchants often go like this:

Me: “what is your value proposition? When I visit your website, why would I want to buy from you instead of XYZ competitor?”

Merchant: “oh, we have great customer service, a beautiful website and fast shipping times.”

I then try to gently state the following: “But so does Amazon/Walmart/Target, and so does XYZ competitor. What really sets you apart?”

Merchant: “because we are the oldest company in the industry!”

Me (again, gently): “But do your customers actually care about that?” (this could actually go the wrong direction as customers could see older companies has having more overhead, thus higher prices)

Merchant: “Yes, because they still buy from us.”

Does the above reflect your company?

I believe this to be the most difficult part, but the most crucial and fundamental aspect of marketing. What sets your company apart? And, more importantly, is it compelling? Is it enough to actually make a difference (ie, a sale, a lead)?

It seems that many merchants (of course, not all!) rely on the fact that they are a competitor, instead of pushing to be the leader. This comes back to the idea that anyone can sell on the internet—and there are many people that can and do.

In this episode, we investigate two types of public value propositions: 1) spoken and 2) implied.

Spoken Value Propositions:

I consider a spoken value proposition as something you tell visitors up-front: “this is why you should buy from me.” This often implies what is wrong with your competition.

Ideally, you have a value proposition that is best-in-class. Maybe it is something that no one can even come close to touching.

For example:

A lifetime warranty for your products?Maybe an incredible guarantee?Maybe the best reviews or accolades in the industry?Maybe easy returns?Maybe you are working harder than anyone else and have refined and developed this product? Be careful, lest your competitors surprise you with their efforts.Maybe it’s you? You are known in the industry and people trust you?

Side note: you might be thinking, “we have a patent.” Great, but being forced to buy a product is in no way an indication of your customer’s loyalty. Oracle is a great example.

Book recommendation: Blue Ocean.

If you don’t have a compelling value proposition, you have a problem. Please read Blue Ocean. Get a compelling value proposition or you will always be playing catch-up.

I suggest that you take a couple of weeks, do some soul-searching investigation of who are you and what is this company? Where can you shine and stand out from the rest of the players.

What if you don’t think you have a compelling value proposition? This all will still apply. Test your ideas. Throw crazy ideas up there, and see how it goes. Does it impact revenue? Does your bounce rate improve?

Proclaiming your value!

Talk to your customers. Why did they buy from you? It could be you have a value proposition that you don’t know about.

PLEASANTHILLGRAIN.COM

PleasantHillGrain.com

One of the first websites I helped bring a value proposition to the forefront. Pleasant Hill Grain’s chief competitor is Amazon. In order to successfully compete, you must reduce a visitor’s risk sensors: what can go wrong if I purchase from this company?

Let’s evaluate the value proposition as displayed in this box

If you are like most, you have experienced a move: maybe to a different flat in the same city, or maybe to another country. My story is unique in that I’ve lived in pretty much the same city all my life. It’s nothing special, but I am grateful for it. Before I moved out of my family’s house, I had the opportunity to help my family first build a house and then worked through the process of moving into it. It can be stressful, and you want to make sure that everything works.

This analogy of moving into a house is quite a parallel to replatforming your ecommerce site:

It’s pretty well inevitable (Magento 1 end of life means you need to find something else, whether that is Magento 2, Big Commerce, Shopify)It takes a lot of time. Unfortunately, there is no replatform service that is the flip of a switch.It takes money. Your code and website was quite happy as it was. Now you need to figure something else out.It is risky. How do you ensure that you aren’t making a really bad choice? Or that the people you are trusting to do this migration actually know what they are talking about?

My focus in this information is primarily on the last point: it is risky. We have all heard the horror stories of merchants replatforming (they’re promised higher sales), but their revenue drops after the launch. While most everything in life has a risk factor associated with it, the fact that your website is feeding your children increases the risk in such a change.

Skip to: 01:30 My goal is to equip you, the merchant, with basic tools so you can reduce your internal risk metrics and feel comfortable in a quality re-platforming project.

Part 1: will search engines find pages on your new site?

When you replatform, the new platform will likely have at least some changes in it’s hierarchy, and thus the linking structure. For example, your previous product might be found at https://swiftotter.com/products.aspx?id=12345, but you are making your new website more search-engine friendly and now the same product is found at https://swiftotter.com/my-awesome-product.

You just launched your new website, but visitors from Google see this?

The problem is if you do nothing about this change in URL structure, visitors will search for “My Awesome Product”. Google will show them the link to https://swiftotter.com/products.aspx?id=12345, they will get a “Page not found” error, they will immediately click back, and you just lost a potential customer. Remember, Google is not the only issue. Hopefully, you have many links to your website from other websites, recommending your products content.

EXAMPLE:

Let’s say our old website is https://myexamplestore.com. You can find our best-selling gizmo here: https://myexamplestore.com/view-product.php?sku=amazing-gizmo. You are migrating to a new BigCommerce and have imported all of your products. The design is ready to go, and you pull the trigger. Customers are now browsing the new website. When they go to your store, they can easily find Amazing Gizmo using the search or navigation system.

However, when you search in Google for “Amazing Gizmo”, you are presented with this URL:

https://myexamplestore.com/view-product.php?sku=amazing-gizmo

Unless you have taken action to redirect this URL, this is where customers will land. On this new platform, they will see a “This page is not found.”

HOW CAN I ENSURE THAT GOOGLE WILL FIND THE NEW URLS?

Hopefully, you have already established redirects. These steps will give you peace of mind (or freak you out) that there are no stones left unturned with regards to these files.

We recommend and use Screaming Frog. It is 150 British Pounds per year. If the price scares you, think of how much this may save you. If 20% of your links will error out, you could lose way more than 20% of your revenue. And, no, the above is not an affiliate link.

Step #1: Scan Existing Site for all URLs:

Open Screaming Fr