Hey you, happy Sunday! Hopefully you had a weekend full of warmth and rest. To our friends in Texas: I hope you’re doing better, are getting heat, power, and water back soon.
We are testing a new way to work with brands in a smaller, more accessible capacity. You can now book our time by the hour, versus a full, complete monthly retainer. I just started doing these and they seem to be incredibly valuable for the brands. You can read more about it on MentorPass here.
Coffee & Commerce is happening on Clubhouse this Wednesday evening at 8:30pm EST. Garry Tan published our transcript talking all about DTC. I made a list on Business Insider for the Top 29 Gen Z VC’s Changing Venture Capital. Co Op Commerce launched V2 (sign up if you haven’t already!). Ian from Seat Geek just launched a podcast about the business side of influencer marketing. I found the perfect sleep gummy that gives me green Whoop recoveries.
It turns out everyone is really a hot coffee drinker. A few people liked luke-warm coffee, to which I have no response. How does one even?!
Question for you this week… What's your favorite fast food restaurant? Reply with your answer. Guilty pleasure spot, so don’t lie and tell me it's Sweetgreen, when I know it’s probably Taco Bell!! Mine is definitely Taco Bell.
Today I wanted to talk through: Optimizing Conversion for your Website
I've been doing more Clubhouse sessions lately, and there is always one common question:
What is the 1 thing I can do to better my revenue?
The answer is simple: increase the on-site conversion rate of your store.
Now, this does assume that your brand, product, story-telling, and value-props are already in order, but if they're not, then I would focus on those elements first, and then continue reading this article.
I always say, "You have to treat your customer like they're Kim Kardashian on a red carpet, and you, as the brand, are the assistant with her. You need to have everything ready for your customer to read, understand, and learn about the brand. You can not expect them to navigate around the website and learn for themselves."
A couple of easy ways to test it:
- Have someone try to navigate your site after a couple of drinks in them. They should understand everything about what you're selling, and why they need it.
- Have someone with gray hair try to navigate your site and also understand everything from start to finish. "Gray-haired people" are also great for making your cart/checkout process flawless.
There are tons of things you can do for your website including making landing pages (see the Sharma Brands landing page guide here), running promotions (read about that here), setting up an acquisition offer, and/or getting deep into the dev work of your site to make it more UX-friendly.
Explain Why
This is the easiest thing to add to your site. Simply explain, at a 5th-grade level, why someone needs the product you're selling in their life. You can use icons to make it even easier, but you can also just use a simple paragraph.
Here are some examples of how we have done it:
An Acquisition Offer
When you bring someone new to your site or brand, you want to think about how can you put them into the mindset of an In n Out customer — make it easy for them to get what they want quickly, and get them out.
On this purchase, you ideally give them a discount in exchange for sampling your product, but at the same time, you're getting a higher UPT (units per transaction) order than just a single product.
If you're a product that has high-consumption habits around it, then focus on including a variety of flavors, colors, scents, etc. so you give yourself the highest probability of getting that second purchase.
You can also do this with a GWP (gift with purchase) as well.
Above the Fold
Focus on your most important information being above the fold, that means without a user having to scroll. Whether it's your product pages, your landing pages, or even your homepage, if your information isn't front and center, and easy to digest, you're going to miss out on a lot of potential transactions.
Remember, it's not your potential customer's job to do the research. It's on you to make it easy for them to consume it.
Email/SMS Capture
This is the lowest hanging fruit out there. If you use a platform like Klaviyo, it becomes really easy to "retarget" a user with a follow-up email based on what they looked at (yes, that is possible).
Add an email pop-up from Klaviyo, and set up follow-up emails to hit them for PDP abandonment, cart abandonment, checkout abandonment, and all with discounts at different levels. You can do the same with SMS via PostScript.
Testing Buttons
This goes back to making it easier for customers to shop your site. There is nothing like a fast shopping experience on a site when you know what you want (optimizing your site doesn't always have to just serve new customers).
There are hundreds of tests you can do. The one I remember most was when we added "ADD TO CART" buttons on the Collections page (where all products are displayed) at Hint. Not only did our conversion rate skyrocket, but our AOV (average order value) per transaction also went up, and we were able to increase forecasts by 7-figures.
Website Merchandising
Merchandising can be a complicated word that means a few different things:
Discounts: Running promotions (like I mentioned here)
Bundles: Creating high AOV pre-made bundles to incentivize larger purchases, that also makes sense to the consumer, usually because of convenience, variety, or a discount.
Up-Sell: Taking customers who add something to their cart, for example, and offering something that is more appetizing, or makes more sense.
Cross-Selling: Taking customers who've purchased a product, or added it to cart, and give them options for other products they'd like based on that choice.
Landing Pages
This is a no-brainer. Regardless of how great you think your site may be, it's never a bad idea to compete against yourself with a landing page.
You can get all the info on what a good landing page is by reading the Sharma Brands Landing Page Guide.
Social Proof
User-generated content (UGC), earned media (aka press), and customer reviews are all great examples of adding social proof to your site.
You can add a brag bar to your site to show where your brand has been talked about.
You can also add reviews (focus on ones that include outcomes of using your product).
Competitor Comparison
When all else fails, compare your product or brand to what your customer might likely have as a reference point. For the points, focus on the outcomes, not just the value props.
You can also see how we made this one a bit more fun and "on brand" to Cha Cha Matcha.
Hopefully, this is all helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to reply here. If you want a full website audit, reply to this email and I’ll connect you with someone who does great audits.
Now onto some fun stuff…
Software/App of the Week
Smartrr - A better ReCharge.
I was excited to see this company recently launched, and they’ve built an incredible subscription platform. It’s still in beta, but sign up on their site to get updates on when they fully roll out. They just went live on BEHAVE candy, and the subscription checkout flow uses the new Shopify-integrated flow. It’s beautiful.
Sign up — Smartrr.com
Brand of the Week
House of Wise - a brand built by Women, for Women, using the magical powers of CBD.
The sleep gummies were highly recommended to try out, since I’m such a 9-hours of sleep a night freak, and they did not disappoint. They got me a full sleep, without waking up once, and a green recovery on my Whoop the next morning. They also tasted like a fruit snack, not like a CBD gummy.
Shop — HouseOfWise.co
I hope you have a great week, this coming week. Get those 9 hours of sleep tonight, and hopefully the rest of the week, too! PS, if you’re on Clubhouse follow me to join any of the DTC rooms I host this week (I’m @sharma). Have a great night!