This season on "Decoded," presented by BigCommerce, we'll delve into the intricate processes behind successful brands. Discover how they conceptualize and debut new products, set their objectives, make pivotal decisions, and foster seamless collaboration across their teams to breathe life into a new product.

Our guest on our 5th episode of Decoded Season 2 is none other than Brian Schmitt. He is the Co-Founder at surefoot, which is a conversion rate optimization testing company. He has 20 years of experience in delivering optimization. And by his account, testing hasn't really changed all that much in these 20 years, and maybe the shopping cart and the nature of the shopping cart really haven't changed all that much either. 

“Lies, damn lies, and statistics."

• {00:08:02} - “A lot of those sites just don't have the traffic to support testing in the proper way. And they're making decisions then on bad data, and that's where people get frustrated with A/B testing.” - Brian
• {00:09:05} - “There are opportunities for a timer to actually improve conversion rate, but I would say, in general, no, a timer is a bad thing, creating a dark pattern of false urgency for your customer, and they trust you less over time.” - Brian
• {00:24:49} - “We've certainly had clients where the longer that quiz is, the more bought in the customer becomes by the end of the quiz because they really feel like it's been optimized to them and what products they're seeing. And if you make that too short, too easy, and you have too broad of answers at the end, people don't believe to quiz, and so they're less likely to trust the answers that come out at the end of it.” - Brian
• {00:33:34} - “I think the practice of optimization is not a specific treatment of a website. It is the practice of trying things and measuring the difference, of the new thing versus the old thing. That is it.” - Brian
• {00:40:52} - “The leaders that excel in businesses that are generational, like the Nordstroms of the world, that can continue to stay culturally relevant over time, they have high conviction and high intuition because they are in tune both with what the brand delivers and what their customer expects of the brand, and that has to come through in the eCommerce channel today more than ever before.” - Phillip
• {00:41:95} - “If they haven't really dug in and detailed out customer desire, behavior, life stage, priorities and if they're not really able to articulate that, the rest of the whole thing is gonna be garbage. You've got to get to a pretty significant and specific level of detail to develop product. And if you're not able to develop that level or have that level of knowledge, your product isn't gonna be good enough because you don't even understand what you're going up against.” - Loretta Soffe

Associated Links:

• Learn more about Brian Schmitt and surefoot
• Grab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand here
• Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
• Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
• Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

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