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Identifying Leverage Points in Your Business

We’re trying something a little different on this episode of eCommerceFuel. Instead of our normal interview, I’ve invited Noah Kagan and Dave McGeady to talk about Dave’s business Wyldsson. Noah and I evaluated Wyldsson’s products and website, and today we’re aiming to identify big levers that could make Wyldsson even more successful in a short period of time.

Dave, Noah and I talk about the inexpensive, quick, and impactful changes that Wyldsson could make in the next thirty days to boost its sales and improve its conversion rate. We also discuss why Dave should start collecting emails from his customers, how to encourage them to become subscribers, and the small tweak he can make to his product photos to move even more inventory.

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(With your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com, Noah Kagan of Sumo, and Dave McGeady of Wyldsson)

The Full Transcript

Andrew: Welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast, the show dedicated to helping high six and seven-figure entrepreneurs build amazing online companies and incredible lives. I’m your host and fellow e-commerce entrepreneur, Andrew Youderian.

Hey, you guys. Andrew here. And welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. And I’m excited about this one. Doing something a little bit different that I think should be fun. Hopefully, it should be entertaining. And, you know, it has the potential for having me and my guest fall on our face flat looking like we don’t know anything. So that always makes it exciting. Doing a little experiment. And the genesis of this episode, I was talking with Noah Kagan from sumo.com. I’m sure a lot of you guys listening are familiar with his work. And we were talking about business and life and podcasting. He’s got a great new podcast called “Noah Kagan Presents,” very worthwhile. Check him out, if you haven’t listened to it.

And we started talking about leverage points in a business and so how so often times, people focus on the wrong things. We focus on the wrong things. And a lot of times that there’s really a few big levers that, even if they don’t require a ton of work, that they control a lot of the profitability and the growth of a business. And so we came up with an idea. What if we tried to create a podcast episode and did a little case study where we took somebody’s business and we didn’t just try to give them feedback because that’s done fairly frequently, but we tried to give the most impactful one or two suggestions that we could that took less than a month’s time to implement and less than $1,000 in investment to implement? Could we move the needle with those restrictions on our recommendations?

And so that’s what we’re gonna try to do. So today, joining me apart from Noah, is Dave McGeady and his business, Wyldsson, where he sells really high-end, natural snack and food products. So, that’s the backdrop. And with kind of a context, I’ll drop us into our discussion to give you a little more detail with my guests, Dave and Noah. Like I mentioned at the top, I’m joined by Noah Kagan of sumo.com and okdork.com, as well as Dave McGeady from Wyldsson. Gentlemen, how are you guys doing?

Dave: Doing good. Yeah. Good to speak with you.

Andrew: Yeah. Thanks for being on. Noah, How are you, sir?

Noah: I’m doing great too. I’m in Ireland, as well. Hey. It’s awesome up here, man. I love it. Man, I’ve got a lot…you’ve got a lot of green out here.

Dave: Yeah. He must be in the Australian quarter of Ireland, wherever he is.

Noah: Yeah. My mom’s Irish. And my dad’s Scottish. So I’m kinda in the middle.

Dave: That’s very good, very good.

Andrew: Dave, how did he hit it on a scale of 1 to 10 on the accent?

Dave: He nailed it. Come on. It’s brilliant. Yeah. He’s basically a native.

Andrew: Cool. Cool. So hey, before we get into the facts that Noah and I have on your business, give people who don’t know about Wyldsson just a quick, super, you know, high-level story. How did you get started? What do you sell? Who are your customers? What’s the story in a nutshell?

The Wyldsson Story

Dave: Yeah. So I started Wyldsson a few years back. So really what I wanted to do was try and make healthier food products that actually taste good. And so my starting point was with basically trail mix. So, you know, there’s a lot of trail mixes in supermarkets and stuff, but it’s often not doing very well. So I wanted to make kinda better quality versions of it and kinda package it in a more convenient way than those little kinda zip lock bags which kind of, you know, break and spill in your bag. So that was the starting point. And I started selling it online. It started going pretty well. So we started expanding the product range to all sorts of other products as well, like milk butters and bake your own bars and Overnight Oats and stuff.

So our target market is, you know, it’s really…your kind of, you know, it’s your, Andrew, your dairy and other…do you know, Kagan, you know, busy, active, you know, affluent professionals. They…they’re trying to look after themselves. They’re, you know, in their 30s. They’re trying to eat cleaner, eat healthier. So, that’s very much our target market.

Andrew: Guy, okay. Very cool. So Noah, you and I both had a chance to look over the business. We’ve kinda seen some analytics. We had a chance to look, of course, at the website, chat with Dave about, you know, what he thinks and his customer base. I’d love to get…what are you, for our experiment, trying to provide? I guess, let’s first talk about some general thoughts on his business. And then we can get into the real specific one or two leverage points of things we can do or recommend. What were your thoughts on the business, Noah?

Noah: Yes. So Dave, I emailed you. And I was little confused about what to do because it was like, “Could you send us like a variety pack?” One of my favorite things…and this sounds so stupid, but I always think it’s interesting of businesses to notice what customers respond to. I really responded that you put my name on the packaging. Andrew, did you notice that at all?

Andrew: I did, yeah. I thought it was cool. It wasn’t something that stood out to me crazy level, but yeah, I definitely noticed that.

Thumbs Up for Personal Touches

Noah: I really like that. So that was number one. I think it’s very interesting. Like you literally just put my name on the sticker that you put on the label for the granola. The second thing that was actually interesting for me is that you have a good amount of products for a small company, right? I don’t know how small you guys are. Maybe you guys are a large company, but what was interesting for me as I was looking over some of your slides and things like that that you sent us, and this is a common thing I’ve seen from a lot of businesses, you guys actually make the majority of your money from it seems like two products. Yet, you kind of have so many other products that I think are almost distracting.

So, like 50% plus of your revenue is from the ProMix snacks and then from your nut butter. And I was…it just made me start wondering and thinking like… And those tasted great. Those…out of the things I had, I was like, “Wow, these are really great.” And I was like, “Well, why doesn’t he just focus more on those and then kind of take away the attention from the things that are less popular with your customers?” So that was kinda my two kind of first glances like, “Cool idea. I love the customization. Focus more on what was working.”

And the other thing that I was trying to understand or think about is that health is now kind of like cool, right? Before like buying organic was not cool. And so I was just trying to understand more of like, how could you narrow your market to being like, “Who is this for?” Is it for like…you know, you sent us some feedback. Is it for people with kids, right? Is it for like, you know, people who wanna get healthy that are also like crazy active? And I actually just thought like having a little bit more of a more narrow market would either like speak to me or not speak to me and then really help you in general with your marketing and with your growth.

Andrew: Yeah. One of the nice things, Noah, because, you’re, I mean, you’re fairly…I mean, you’re in the gym a lot. You’re pretty active. And I don’t think I’m quite as ripped as you probably are being in the gym all the time, but I get out a decent amount. Andrew, do you ever see someone that says they work out all the time, but they’re real fat? I’m like, “Now I’m all nervous when you see me in person.” You’re like, “No, you’re pretty disgusting,” but we…it worked out well because like we’re…I mean, I don’t wanna cut into the rest of your thoughts, Noah, but I think we’re kinda quasi… We’re in, you know, somewhat of the demographic I think that would naturally or normally buy Dave’s product, which is kinda nice, so.

Dave: Probably our focus is more on kind of Andrew, I would say. I mean, we wanna know if Andrew plays basketball a few times a week. You know, he’s a busy guy. He’s got a young family. He tries to work out when he can but, you know, tries to squeeze it in now and again, but doesn’t have a lot of time. That seems to be very much our, you know, the type of customers we have at the moment. Noah, probably a little bit different, you know, very, very focused on, you know, health and nutrition and what he eats. We have some Noahs as well, but I think we focus more on the Andrews. There’s a lot more Andrews out there. So, that’s really, I think, what we’re trying to go after.

Andrew: So the busy guys that are active that actually have no real muscles to show for it is what you’re…

Noah: I would actually…and, Andrew, to think about. And here’s the hard part with marketing is that no one wants to give up people, right? It’s like, I guess you could say everyone wants like many husbands or many wives, but it, you know, generally you choose one. And you go deeper with that. So that was kinda like where I was thinking with you. It’s like, right, I come to your site now and like how many granola companies are out there? How many like X type of products are there? A bunch in every category.

There’s not literally almost anyone without competition, but I think what was interesting for me is if I came to your site, it says, “eCleaner.” And I was like, “Well, who’s your eCleaner?” And it’s like, “Well, it should be people with families need to eat healthy because they’re so busy. And we’ve made the snacks that make life easy for them, right?” And I don’t know. I was just trying to think about, like one thought I was thinking related to that, take like your last 50 customers or take the, you know, the top 100 customers that have spent the most. And just go search ’em up on Facebook.

This is what I’ve done with someone at sumo.com. Search them on Facebook. And then literally just make a spreadsheet on Google Spreadsheets or Excel, and just categorize them. Like take your top 100 customers. And it would be like, “All right. Man, woman, man, woman, man.” And you can look ’em all up on Facebook or LinkedIn. And then actually just start creating a very specific avatar. And I think the more that you actually like refine your messaging to be like, “It’s for golfers. It’s for families. It’s for single guys who like biking,” I actually think you’ll find more success when with your marketing and then with your growth because you’re just talking to a more narrow customer.

Dave: Mm. Okay.

Thoughts on the Product

Noah: Andrew, what did you think of the product, Andrew?

Andrew: Yeah. So my thoughts, I think the good were I loved the product. I was telling Dave before we hopped on that I genuinely…if he shipped in the U.S., I would buy it regularly because it was delicious. Like, for example, I went on a mountain bike ride with probably 10 minutes of notice at 5:30, 6:00 at night, didn’t have a chance to grab dinner, and it was…and I just pounded one of those vials of the granola that you had or the trail mix that you had. And it was great. It sustained me over like, you know, a 15-mile bike ride that was unexpected. And so, I loved it because it was delicious, it was healthy, and I could eat it really quickly. So a great product.

Looking at your site, like your conversion rate is unbelievably good. It’s about 5%, which is just phenomenal in the e-commerce world. And I think there’s tons of potential for the product. So, the things that I saw that stood out to me was you’ve got…Dave, you’ve got like beautiful photography for your products, but a lot of times it’s hidden. So, for example, like, you know, if you go to your category page, your Wyldsson/products page, all of that entire page, you show all of your products, but you show the packaging on all those products. And, you know, like I think the picture, every picture of one of your products should be a close-up of the product. You know, look because it’s gorgeous. You should show it off.

So I thought the website was a little bit cluttered. Like I’ll get into this in a minute with my recommendation, one or two recommendations, but I think if you simplified the website and used bigger images that showed off how great your product looks to begin with, I think that could be helpful. The packaging I…

Noah: Yeah. So instead of showing the picture of the packaging, we show the actual products in use.

Andrew: Hundred percent. Yeah. Absolutely. When I got the packaging, it was obviously a high-quality, but along the same lines, like Annie… My wife was looking at it. And she was like…she loved the stuff too. She’s like, “This is a great product. It’s delicious. It’s fantastic,” but the packaging she felt like it…I felt like a little bit like an MRE, right, like a military food ready-to-eat because it’s kinda got the great feel to it. And you’ve got really cool little quotes and sayings. And it’s professional. It’s well-done, but with that packaging I…you know, if you ever re-do it, have three-quarters of it be transparent so you can see the stuff inside because that’s the stuff that looks really good.

So those were some of the things…I think, you know, for you, a great product, the biggest opportunities on your side are, you know, kind of some of the branding, you know, the website, the marketing, I mean, and a 5% conversion rate, I think…and especially with I’m guessing something on here where customers are buying over and over and over again, you’ve got a great lifetime value for your customer. I think if you started scaling at marketing and you knew how much your customers bought from you over a two-year period, I’m guessing you could do really well scaling up on paid marketing, so.

Dave: Mm-hmm. Okay. That’s really interesting. I mean, one of the things that I’ve noticed before is that, you know, when some people have come to our sites, they’ve seen the packaging. They’ve kind of said, “Oh, well, you know, I’m not into protein powders,” because they kinda assume that what’s in the packaging is kind of sort of protein powders and supplements and stuff, but we’re actually a food company. So, maybe by changing the photographs from the packaging to the food, it will help convey that we’re more of a food company. So, I guess that’s the first thing that we’ll do is we’ll…you know, we will change the photographs to the products in use.

Noah: I have heard that, yeah, it is sad. The thing…it’s interesting. There’s that like Airbnb story. Have you heard that, Andrew, where it’s like they went and actually…That’s now when you have a place there, they pay for a photographer to come take it versus you doing it yourself. And it like doubled their bookings. One thing I was curious, David, for you is that, like which food company online do you admire most?

Dave: Yeah. Hard to know. That’s a good question. I mean, okay, there’s aspects that I admire of say NatureBox or maybe Graze. There’s some protein supplement companies I admire, as well, but that said, I don’t think anybody’s doing a particularly good job in food online at the moment.

Copy From The Best

Noah: So my point with that and what I’ve done in my career and when I build websites is that I try to copy and then iterate. So I’ve…think about companies that literally have like 50, 100, 500, 5,000 people that have already spent a bunch of time AB testing, figuring this out. Like a lot of times, I just go look at them. And it doesn’t even have to be in your category. It could be in women’s fashion. It could be amazon.com. It could be like another e-commerce up on Shopify. Like these guys have already spent a bunch of money figuring things out. I think you could learn a lot just from, for the overall layout of your business. And this applies for every business.

So like, for example, on like on one of your by-pages like on a specific product, like you’re trying to reinvent the wheel, but these guys have already kinda figured a lot of those things out. For example, like on one of your individual by-products, it’s like there’s a lot of different things going on. And you’re just like, “Well, how does the best guys do it that have already figured it out? Let me at least start with that as my baseline and then iterate from there,” or like on your checkout page like a very…another thing is like you have all of these links and everything still showing on your checkout page, but Amazon and some of the top e-commerce stores don’t show that.

And so, I think what I’ve tried to do in my business is 90% copy what the best are doing. And then innovate in the 10%. So that’s what I try to do is just look at any different vertical of people I admire and see what I can learn from them, and then put that in my own business.

Andrew: So Noah, let’s get super specific and put…kinda distill it all down for him. What would be your top one to two takeaways where he…because kinda our plan for this was like, “Okay. What can we try to give Dave, one or two things, that takes less than 30 days and less than $1,000 to implement?” I’m trying to find like the highest leverage points. So what would those be for you?

Noah: Totally. All right. So I’m gonna give him things. And all them are free. I don’t have anything that actually costs money. I have a few questions that I just need to get to really quickly. So Dave, for your marketing stuff, like how do people find about you?

How People Find Wlydsson

Dave: Yeah. Okay. I mean, we have a lot of high-profile athletes who are customers. And some of them have tweeted or put stuff on Instagram. So and these range from, you know, golfers. One of our customers is playing in Augusta at the Masters next week. You know, we have international rugby players, soccer players. So that’s really helped. And then the rest is probably word-of-mouth.

Noah: So, that’s kind of what I thought. You don’t really know. And I don’t mean that as an insult at all. And what I generally try to do is find two marketing channels that I can really just like go crazy on. So for you, you know, I was looking through some of your customer feedback. Like it sounds like being on podcasts has really helped. Referrals has helped. So I’ve got two sections that I wanna go in. I’ll give you tactics of things to do for site optimization. So I think there’s two separate issues. There’s getting more customers and marketing and then, secondly, site optimization.

So part one for marketing, here’s the things that I thought of at a high level. Number one, it looked like your customers found out about you through a podcast and podcasts. So literally, you should make a goal of every Monday to contact five people to get on their shows or you should make that your influencers get on the shows to talk about your product, but what I do is I like every Monday, I wanna get on people’s shows to talk about sumo. So I hit up five people every Monday. And just make that a habit. Number two is that if you’re doing…you should use your referrals better. So I don’t know if you have a…do you have a referral thing already in your product? That’s kind of a standard stuff.

Dave: We don’t really. We have one for some of our customers. Yeah, not really.

Marketing Tactics

Noah: So even at a high-level for marketing, come up with 10 ideas. And then just pick two. And try each of those two every month. And see if you…it actually works, meaning that you can turn the dial on it. So like get on podcasts. Do referrals. Like recipes, it seems like a lot of people find out about you through recipes. The biggest thing I would say like besides being, you know, giving you the tax exclusion that I think are interesting on the marketing is basically like what’s already worked that you can actually then start engineering? Meaning that like what’s worked for marketing that you can be like, “All right. Well, how do I get more influences because I know that changes my business? How can I do, as Andrew was saying, paid marketing, because I know that changes my business?”

Or like rebuying, right? Like the best customers are your existing ones, so either for referring or for rebuying. And then just really going back to more of what’s working. On the site-specific optimization from…here’s just…I’m gonna give you four things to do. And they’re all free. And you can do all do ’em today. Is…Andrew, is that okay if I give four?

Andrew: Yeah. Go for it.

The Need to Collect Emails

Noah: All right. Number one, you’re not collecting emails. And I know you had like notifications, which I don’t actually like for e-commerce businesses because it’s only if they’re on their browser. So you can use sumo.com. It’s totally free and collect emails. And then every…and you said you’re messaging people, but I don’t even really see a way to give you an email address. So, a lot of e-commerce stores like kind of the best practice is, “Hey, get 10% off your first purchase,” or, “Find out about our next product,” or, you know, whatever it is you wanna do, but collect emails. Like use sumo or use any other product, if you wanna go grab some other plug-in.

You should communicate often. It’s one of these things where it doesn’t even have to be about your product. You can communicate about Andrew. You can communicate, you know, about some of your customers. You can communicate about how you guys are behind the scenes. Like that’s of the one things surprising me about marketing is people actually wanna hear from you more often than you think, if they like you. And I think you seem like a likeable person. So I would actually communicate weekly.

Turn on Subscriptions by Default

Noah: Number two, you do subscriptions, but it’s not on by default. I would test turning that on by default, right? Like when I add to cart, I have to go to the cart and then turn on the subscription. You should just copy, again, best practice. So like on your purchase page for like your ProMix, have the subscription button be right here by default on. That’s like, “Hey, save 10% right here. And get a subscription of it.” So I think that’s kind of an easy way to get people to just kinda in the flow. Number two, on your cart page, as you’re checking out, you have a bunch of links. Like what I do and pretty much all my, like trying to get them to buy or trying to get them to email or trying to get them to take action, you wanna remove the distractions.

So on your cart page, like you don’t want your social button icons on the bottom left. And you don’t want like the “About Us” and reviews and context on the left. Like, “Focus me on what you want me to do. And remove everything else,” right? It’s like of a menu. Do you guys ever go to a restaurant and then there’s like all these items on it? And you’re like, “I don’t know. There’s so many choices.” Like I think that’s why we like it when we go to a restaurant and it’s like pre-fixed or there’s like three things to choose from.

The last thing I would say and then, Andrew, I’m curious to hear your thoughts, I actually think you have a great opportunity for upsells. and I think upsells are shady a lot of the time because it’s just like, “How do we get our average order value up?” And I’m just like, “Well, what is something that’s an upsell? Like if I buy a TV, I probably want a cable or if I buy a golf club, I probably want a golf ball.” So I guess I was just thinking, I actually wanted you to recommend me products that you think would go well with like coconut almond flour.

Hey, Noah, a lot of people who buy that like buy this too. So I just thought it kinda actually made sense for me to wanna have that. And then lastly, kinda what I was saying earlier in the show, like I think you have…like your homepage is…it’s got a lot of things going on. Why don’t you just show me your most popular things? Like you have…like think of your homepage as like valuable real estate, right? And you wanna put your best things in the most valuable real estate.

So like logos to like, “Cycling Weekly,” cut that stuff out. Put that in the bottom, but what I would do is like even on your shop section, just show me the most popular stuff. And then focus people on the winners because you’re distracting me with all this other stuff that, frankly what happens is I start thinking about like Overnight Oats and then savory sprinkles. And then I’m like on Instagram forgetting about you already.

So my point there is like remove things from the site that aren’t your most popular. Focus on the most popular. Update the messaging on that to the right customer. Let me just give you one thing. Take the logos from your front page, the…and move those down. Let’s just do that to start. And then make your products that are most popular the ones that are at the top of that page.

Be Clear About Offerings

Andrew: Noah, I think it’s interesting because we have a couple. We didn’t compare notes, obviously, before we hopped on. So there’s a couple I think that my two echo yours pretty loudly. And so I think that’s a good sign for you, Dave. It should make it a, you know, pretty no-brainer here. So my two takeaways were the first one was subscriptions. So when I first started looking at your product pages, I didn’t even think you could subscribe to get them regularly. I didn’t know it was an option. So, you know, obviously, you can click through and turn that on, but just like Noah said, have that on there because if you can get someone hooked in there on a subscription basis, that’s incredibly valuable from your spot. So I would turn that on on the product page.

And I’d do some testing to see like offer different levels of, you know, savings, 10%, 20%, whatever it is. And try to get a sense of how long…if you don’t know how long your average subscriber stays, a subscriber right now, I would find that out in the next 30 days because that’s hugely valuable, right, because if someone stays a subscriber for three months, maybe you can’t deeply discount it. But if somebody stays a subscriber on average for 19 months, oh man, like give ’em their first, you know, two months free. You know, if they started to subscribe, something like that, test that out. So that would be my first one. Set that up by default.

Simplify the Homepage

Andrew: The second one would be echoing a lot of what Noah said on the homepage. Simplify, simplify, simplify. So here’s what I would have as your homepage after looking at your site. Make it full-width. Get rid of the little navigation thing on the left, so it’s a full-width homepage. At the very top, come up with a headline that’s a little…that’s large and a little more specific. And I’m not sure exactly what it is, but something to deal with online like, “Incredibly delicious raw food and snacks,” or, “Incredibly delicious raw food and snacks you can eat on the go or that you can prepare quickly,” something that combines the incredible food that’s delicious with the speed and efficiency at which you can consume it because that’s something that I enjoyed.

That’s something that in the survey results that I saw from the people that gave you feedback, that they echoed a lot. So headline at the top, and then right below that, have your…you’ve got a products page right now. And I think it’s just like Wyldsson/products, where all of your products are shown on that one page. Do you know which page I’m talking about, Dave?

Dave: Yeah. It’s kinda the sharp page. Yeah.

Elevate Prime Real Estate

Andrew: Yeah. So take that page. And put that on your homepage right below that big logo. That should be your homepage with a couple tweaks. One, instead of having the default image be all of the packaging that just kinda has the gray packaging, change all of your default images so that they show big, beautiful close-ups of the actual food. So those should…all of that should be on the homepage. And then put your top two ones that sell the most, top two products that are the best sellers, at the very top of that page so that they’re front and center. So once you have that, you’ve got your headline. You’ve got all of your products with much better images right on the homepage.

Right below that, you’ve got a great kick-starter video. Like I went through and watched your kick-starter video. And, obviously, that kick-starter was for the vile, the plastic vile you did, but the first half of that video is just gold for an “About Us” page. You talk about…you show how you’re mixing up the nuts and why you did it. It’s a great story. And it resonated. So I would cut the first half of that video and put that on your homepage. Put that on your “About Us” page because it’s powerful. I think it was great.

And then below that at the very bottom, then you can put the press and the testimonials and all that other stuff, but at the top, it’s valuable real estate. That’s the layout I would use. So, I’m like Noah. Get those descriptions turned on by default. And completely revamp your homepage to focus more on who you’re selling to and the products and how gorgeous they are.

Noah: Andrew, you’re the man. The one thing that, you know, I’m learning as you’re talking about it, Andrew, is just like make it easier for people to keep rebuying and then secondly, I really like the messages. Like why not just show them the best things? Like I was looking at your product page as Andrew was talking about it. And I’m scrolling through it, man. And I’m like, “There’s a lot of options, which is great, but there’s a lot.” And I was like, “What are the, like one or two I should just buy?” And I think I’m thinking about this for like my blog or for my podcast or for like sumo.com. It’s like, “What are the tools people just use? And how do we just focus on those?”

Dave: Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, there is maybe something that we need to think about here. I’m not as…you know, looking at one product, for example, is the bar mix. And we have each different variety listed separately. So there’s bar mix, the brandy version, bar mix, the chocolate/orange version, bar mix, the lemon version. Maybe we should kinda consolidate all of those into just one product. And then have a drop-down menu where you could select the variety. That might kinda sell it good for all of the products.

Noah: Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. I would even consider going further and cutting some of the flavors, at least trying that. So first thing, like I had a story where I was…I went to Amazon. And there was a $10 speaker I was gonna buy. It was $10. So, you know, it’s just like your price point on your bar mix. and they had four colors. And it sounds so stupid, but this is what happens when people are visiting your site. Like there’s four colors of ’em because there’s four choices. I was like, “Nah, I don’t know which one I want. I’m not gonna get any of them.” And I didn’t. And it’s only four colors. And it’s a $10 speaker, but I just wanted them to choose for me like, “Hey, here’s our most popular flavor.” I was like, “Okay. Cool. I don’t have to think about it.”

Andrew: The other thing too that’s an advantage of cutting that down is, so when I got…it will be interesting to hear your thoughts, Noah. When I got your box the very first time, Dave, I was really excited to get it, but it took me like probably 10 or 15 minutes to think through, “Okay. How does like…okay. There’s…okay. There’s the mix kinda like the regular granola style stuff trail mix. And then there’s the oats. Oh, this goes on top of the oatmeal. Okay, but then there’s also the Overnight Oats. And then, oh, these vials.” Like there’s a lot of different stuff. And I think the more…when you go to the product page now that you have, consolidating those, getting rid of those variations, the fewer things you can overwhelm people with, especially if they land on your homepage, the better.

So if someone lands on your homepage and you have at the very top in the top row, you have your top three-selling products just bam, right there, and then maybe a small divider, and then maybe six other sub-products below it, that’s a lot easier…that’s still not a…you know, it’s still a decent number, but that’s way easier to wrap my head around than a grid of, you know, let’s say 20 different products. So, and it will just…I think it will make it easier for people to wrap their minds around what you’re offering and what they wanna buy, so.

Dave: Mm-hmm. Okay. I’m seeing it.

Two Biggest Takeaways

Andrew: So two big things, I think it’s fair to say. Dave, how do you feel about the next 30 days getting subscriptions turned on by default on the product page and then really working on simplifying that homepage? Noah, would you say those are kind of maybe the two biggest…

Noah: I love that. I think sort of, yeah, keep it simple man. And then collect email. Turn on sumo and just collect… You have like, you’re only getting 5% of people buying. That means 95% are not. Everyone’s always like, “Oh, 5%. This isn’t so good.” I’m like, “Yeah. That means that everyone else is just leaving.” So, and we’re happy about it. It’s like, “Yeah. I make money one out of 95 times.” Anyways, yeah, I think those three things are great. Simplify homepage. Subscription on by default. Collect some emails. You don’t have to send the email. Just start collecting ’em so when you are ready…

Andrew: Perfect. And in the meantime, so 30 days, we’ll circle back with you. We’ll give you 30 days to get these implemented, Dave. And then we’ll give you another 30 days to get some results in. And then we’ll hop back on the show here and talk about how it went. And in the meantime, if you’re listening, first go order some products from Dave so that it makes Noah and I look like we’re brilliant and, you know, sales blow up. That would be wonderful.

Dave: Yeah. Yeah, only if you’re in Europe though, Andrew. I’d hate if people got to the end of the, “Oh, this page!” And check your products and…

Andrew: That’s right. Do you think you can maybe squeeze in getting international distribution to the U.S. in the next 30 days? What do you think about that, Dave?

Dave: Yeah. Not a chance, I’m afraid. I wish I could. I wish I could, but it’s too complex.

Andrew: If you…I was kidding, of course. If you’re in the U.K. or Ireland, check that out. And also check out Noah’s podcast in the interim. Noah, you’ve got a new show out, right?

Noah: I’ve just…I’ve been doing it as a hobby where I really like chatting with certain people. So yeah, “Noah Kagan Presents Podcast” where like two weeks ago, I interviewed Mike Pozner who is a famous artist about…I was like, “What is it like to actually be famous?” And, you know, and then other people I’ve been curious to meet. So it’s been like Keith Ferrazzi and, or just like I do book reports of books that I really enjoy like Chet Holmes or actually I’ve been doing one today about how I lost $15,000 on a Jaguar. And I’m really happy about it.

Andrew: Wow. Now that sounds like an interesting episode, but yeah, check out Noah’s podcast, “Noah Kagan Presents.” We’ll link up to his podcast, also to Dave’s Wyldsson site, in all of the show notes. And gentlemen, Dave, thanks for being willing to be a guinea pig. Noah, thanks for being able to come online and talk business and talk shop. And I’m excited to circle back with you guys in a couple months and see how this all went.

Dave: Cool. Thanks very much, guys. We appreciate your help.

Andrew: To connect with and learn from other proven e-commerce entrepreneurs, join us in the eCommerceFuel private community. It’s our tight-knit, vetted group for store owners with at least a quarter million dollars in annual sales. You can learn more and apply for membership at ecommercefuel.com. Thanks so much to our podcast producer, Laura Serino, for all of her hard work in making this show possible and to you for tuning in. Thank you for listening. That will do it for this week, but looking forward to seeing you again next Friday.

 

What Was Mentioned


Andrew Youderian
Post by Andrew Youderian
Andrew is the founder of eCommerceFuel and has been building eCommerce businesses ever since gleefully leaving the corporate world in 2008.  Join him and 1,000+ vetted 7- and 8-figure store owners inside the eCommerceFuel Community.

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