1 00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:02,320 Today on the Winning with Shopify podcast. 2 00:00:02,680 --> 00:00:04,840 Gonna reverse all of the changes now and hope for the best. 3 00:00:04,840 --> 00:00:07,120 And it's what a terrible way to be doing marketing you would not 4 00:00:07,120 --> 00:00:08,720 believe in. Some big organisations have 5 00:00:08,720 --> 00:00:11,640 disconnected the PR and social teams are from SEO and 6 00:00:11,640 --> 00:00:13,480 e-commerce. If we change three things at 7 00:00:13,480 --> 00:00:16,680 once and conversion rates gone up and SE OS gone up, what if 8 00:00:16,680 --> 00:00:18,640 two were effective and one wasn't? 9 00:00:18,680 --> 00:00:20,560 Wouldn't you want to know which one wasn't? 10 00:00:20,680 --> 00:00:22,920 If it works for you, grey. If it doesn't, take it off. 11 00:00:22,920 --> 00:00:24,760 You certainly wouldn't wear Reds to a wedding. 12 00:00:24,880 --> 00:00:27,440 I mean, some Reds would work. But anyway, I'm not here to give 13 00:00:27,440 --> 00:00:55,200 starred advice. Hello and welcome to another 14 00:00:55,200 --> 00:00:57,160 episode of Winning with Shopify Podcast. 15 00:00:57,200 --> 00:00:59,000 Anyone that's tuned in before welcome back. 16 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:01,160 It's great to have you listening to the show or watching the 17 00:01:01,160 --> 00:01:03,320 show, depending on how you tune in with our content. 18 00:01:03,320 --> 00:01:05,640 If you haven't already, check out our YouTube channel and all 19 00:01:05,640 --> 00:01:08,000 the different resources we have on YouTube where we have a few 20 00:01:08,000 --> 00:01:10,640 things we don't have in the normal podcast area. 21 00:01:11,080 --> 00:01:13,040 Equally in my notes today, I have three things to tell you 22 00:01:13,040 --> 00:01:15,040 guys about. One is our community, which is 23 00:01:15,040 --> 00:01:17,200 the Shopify community. It's completely free for brands 24 00:01:17,200 --> 00:01:19,440 to come and join in. So if you want to get involved 25 00:01:19,440 --> 00:01:22,120 in that, just head over to wwspodcast.com. 26 00:01:22,120 --> 00:01:24,280 If you're watching this, Josh and Sophie will put that down at 27 00:01:24,280 --> 00:01:25,880 the bottom of the screen somewhere so you can click on 28 00:01:25,880 --> 00:01:26,960 it. If you're listening to this, 29 00:01:26,960 --> 00:01:29,040 we'll make sure that that is listed in the description so you 30 00:01:29,040 --> 00:01:31,320 can click on it and go and join the community on there. 31 00:01:31,480 --> 00:01:33,960 It just says Shopify community in the menu bar. 32 00:01:34,240 --> 00:01:36,000 We've got hundreds of brands in there now and it's been 33 00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:38,320 absolutely amazing. I can't quite keep up with the 34 00:01:38,320 --> 00:01:39,520 conversations. There's so much going on. 35 00:01:39,520 --> 00:01:41,920 So if you want some help to talk to some other brands just like 36 00:01:41,920 --> 00:01:43,520 you guys go on there, fill that out. 37 00:01:43,520 --> 00:01:45,400 And just to say we only let brands in. 38 00:01:45,400 --> 00:01:47,320 So when you fill out the form, it comes through to one of the 39 00:01:47,320 --> 00:01:48,720 teams. Sometimes I pick them up as 40 00:01:48,720 --> 00:01:50,640 well. And yeah, we only let brands and 41 00:01:50,640 --> 00:01:53,040 there's no agencies, no tech platforms, no one is selling at 42 00:01:53,040 --> 00:01:54,680 you at all. It's just a space for you guys 43 00:01:54,680 --> 00:01:57,560 to chat and also we're on hand if you need any help and advice. 44 00:01:58,240 --> 00:02:00,640 And second thing as well is we are sending out lots of offers 45 00:02:00,640 --> 00:02:02,240 and other bits and pieces in our newsletter. 46 00:02:02,520 --> 00:02:05,920 So hit the newsletter button on our website againwwspodcast.com. 47 00:02:05,920 --> 00:02:08,280 Go and sign up to newsletter. And finally, we have a couple of 48 00:02:08,280 --> 00:02:10,320 amazing new sponsors coming on board. 49 00:02:10,520 --> 00:02:12,600 We still have Inventory Planet and Saguna with us. 50 00:02:12,880 --> 00:02:14,240 Affluencer is still around as well. 51 00:02:14,400 --> 00:02:16,640 And we've got 2 new amazing sponsors that you'll probably 52 00:02:16,640 --> 00:02:19,040 hear from in the next few weeks. We've very, very carefully 53 00:02:19,040 --> 00:02:21,400 chosen these guys and we've actually turned away quite a few 54 00:02:21,440 --> 00:02:23,640 other sponsors over the last few months that wanted to sponsor, 55 00:02:23,640 --> 00:02:25,720 but we thought we don't really like the tech, we don't trust 56 00:02:25,720 --> 00:02:27,280 it, we don't believe it, we don't think it's the right thing 57 00:02:27,280 --> 00:02:28,720 for you guys. So I'm really excited to 58 00:02:28,720 --> 00:02:32,200 introduce those guys. At some point today though, I 59 00:02:32,200 --> 00:02:35,600 had a sudden realisation that we haven't spoken about SEO much, 60 00:02:35,640 --> 00:02:38,120 even though that half of my agency behind us here do SEO. 61 00:02:38,120 --> 00:02:41,080 So obviously if you need any SEO and PBC help, reach out to us. 62 00:02:41,080 --> 00:02:42,560 We're always available. But we're going to talk today. 63 00:02:42,560 --> 00:02:44,120 I'm going to share some things we're going on with some of our 64 00:02:44,120 --> 00:02:47,480 clients and the title I've got, which is written here is all 65 00:02:47,480 --> 00:02:49,880 about CRO and SEO. We probably came up with 66 00:02:49,880 --> 00:02:51,840 something much more fancy you would have seen in the actual 67 00:02:51,840 --> 00:02:54,680 episode title, but I'm going to talk about five things. 68 00:02:54,680 --> 00:02:57,800 This is the kind of synopsis I've put together for this five 69 00:02:57,800 --> 00:03:02,160 things for you to consider when optimizing for both SEO and CRO 70 00:03:02,240 --> 00:03:04,440 together. So just in a nutshell, SEO is 71 00:03:04,440 --> 00:03:07,280 search engine optimization, your organic rankings on Google, and 72 00:03:07,400 --> 00:03:09,920 CRO is conversion rate optimization, which is something 73 00:03:09,920 --> 00:03:12,000 we are doing more and more of, and we have some clients now 74 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:15,360 where we just do CRO. If you're not running AB tests 75 00:03:15,360 --> 00:03:16,920 and you're not trying to increase your conversion rate on 76 00:03:16,920 --> 00:03:19,480 the website, you are completely missing a trick. 77 00:03:19,960 --> 00:03:21,680 I've been in this industry for 18 years. 78 00:03:21,680 --> 00:03:24,520 In fact, the 18 years in June 2025, absolutely. 79 00:03:24,520 --> 00:03:26,120 Listen, this is after that. It's been 18 years now, which 80 00:03:26,280 --> 00:03:28,400 you probably don't care, but that's a big milestone for me, 81 00:03:28,800 --> 00:03:32,800 which I'm quite excited about. And over that time, I have found 82 00:03:32,800 --> 00:03:36,760 that so many brands are spending way too much time, money, energy 83 00:03:36,760 --> 00:03:39,560 and putting too much attention on their paid channels to 84 00:03:39,560 --> 00:03:42,640 acquire new customers. Don't get me wrong, we run paid 85 00:03:42,640 --> 00:03:44,960 advertising, we acquire new customers and we do all of that. 86 00:03:45,440 --> 00:03:47,240 You're just missing a trick though with when they arrive on 87 00:03:47,240 --> 00:03:48,920 the site to get that conversion rate. 88 00:03:49,560 --> 00:03:51,360 Another area we're not going to talk about today is e-mail 89 00:03:51,360 --> 00:03:53,200 lifetime value. And we're just not talking about 90 00:03:53,200 --> 00:03:55,520 it because we can't cover every single topic of every single 91 00:03:55,520 --> 00:03:56,880 part of Shopify every single week. 92 00:03:57,040 --> 00:03:59,960 But that is another area that brands really, really do 93 00:03:59,960 --> 00:04:01,240 neglect. If you look at the money you 94 00:04:01,280 --> 00:04:05,680 invest and the time you spend as a team on things, you'll find a 95 00:04:05,680 --> 00:04:08,000 majority of it is over on customer acquisition. 96 00:04:08,200 --> 00:04:10,360 And the problem with that is if you're acquiring customers that 97 00:04:10,360 --> 00:04:13,960 then don't buy a second time, you have to continually pay to 98 00:04:13,960 --> 00:04:16,399 get more customers in. So we're going to talk about how 99 00:04:16,760 --> 00:04:20,720 SEO can be improved and benefited by CRO and vice versa. 100 00:04:21,440 --> 00:04:24,440 One of the other things that led to me choosing this topic for 101 00:04:24,440 --> 00:04:26,360 today. Before we crack onto the first 102 00:04:26,360 --> 00:04:30,080 point, another issue I found and, and we seem to bridge that 103 00:04:30,080 --> 00:04:33,120 gap in my agency spec when we come in is one of the first 104 00:04:33,120 --> 00:04:36,400 things we ask people on day one of onboarding is what are all 105 00:04:36,400 --> 00:04:38,720 your other agencies? What are your internal teams, 106 00:04:38,720 --> 00:04:41,160 who's who? And we get the same response 107 00:04:41,160 --> 00:04:43,560 when we ask the next question, which is how much do you guys 108 00:04:43,560 --> 00:04:46,480 all talk to each other? And it's often very, very little 109 00:04:47,200 --> 00:04:49,080 you would not believe in. Some big organisations have 110 00:04:49,080 --> 00:04:52,040 disconnected the PR and social teams are from SEO and 111 00:04:52,040 --> 00:04:55,080 e-commerce. And the problem with that is SEO 112 00:04:55,080 --> 00:04:57,640 and e-commerce need that brand awareness to be done. 113 00:04:57,640 --> 00:04:59,480 But also the guys think the brand awareness could probably 114 00:04:59,480 --> 00:05:02,120 sell a lot more products if they did it in tandem with those 115 00:05:02,120 --> 00:05:04,720 other teams. So when we're talking about SEO 116 00:05:04,720 --> 00:05:07,720 and CRO here, what we tend to find is the web agency or the E 117 00:05:07,720 --> 00:05:10,440 com manager themselves, they're trying to improve the site 118 00:05:10,440 --> 00:05:11,880 constantly but not running tests. 119 00:05:11,880 --> 00:05:14,280 So we don't actually know if something you've changed and you 120 00:05:14,280 --> 00:05:17,440 think improved has actually lowered conversion rate, lowered 121 00:05:17,440 --> 00:05:19,160 revenue and lowered what the site's doing. 122 00:05:19,160 --> 00:05:22,040 So it's quite a big issue. Plus, we then find that people 123 00:05:22,040 --> 00:05:24,600 are making lots of SEO changes going, oh, we'll write longer 124 00:05:24,600 --> 00:05:26,200 descriptions to get higher rankings. 125 00:05:26,440 --> 00:05:28,360 There's nothing wrong with that. And I'm going to talk about that 126 00:05:28,360 --> 00:05:30,480 a little bit later as well. And there's nothing wrong with 127 00:05:30,480 --> 00:05:32,600 doing that. But if you're just doing that 128 00:05:32,600 --> 00:05:35,840 for SEO, what happens if you lose conversion along the way 129 00:05:36,160 --> 00:05:38,360 and actually you then find that all channels are dropping and 130 00:05:38,360 --> 00:05:40,880 suffering, but SEO looks fantastic because it's growing. 131 00:05:41,440 --> 00:05:43,680 Well, you've created a problem for everybody else, which is why 132 00:05:43,680 --> 00:05:46,680 integrated marketing is, is quite a well known term and 133 00:05:46,680 --> 00:05:50,040 having an integrated marketing strategy, but it's so important. 134 00:05:50,040 --> 00:05:52,320 And so I'm going to emphasize that by two particular channels 135 00:05:52,320 --> 00:05:55,480 that you don't often find in the same conversation, which is SEO 136 00:05:55,480 --> 00:05:57,400 and CRO. So SEO is the organic listings, 137 00:05:57,880 --> 00:05:59,320 CRO is conversion rate optimization. 138 00:05:59,320 --> 00:06:01,040 And when we talk about conversion rate optimization, 139 00:06:01,040 --> 00:06:04,640 just final caveat for jumping to .1 is we're not just talking 140 00:06:04,640 --> 00:06:06,960 about that one metric, which is conversion rate. 141 00:06:06,960 --> 00:06:08,560 We're talking about making more money. 142 00:06:08,840 --> 00:06:10,400 That is the most important part of this. 143 00:06:10,400 --> 00:06:12,760 And you say about SEO as well, We're trying to make more money 144 00:06:12,760 --> 00:06:15,120 from search engines by doing SEOCRO. 145 00:06:15,120 --> 00:06:17,560 We're trying to make more money from the people arriving on our 146 00:06:17,560 --> 00:06:18,960 site. And conversion is one of the 147 00:06:18,960 --> 00:06:21,840 obvious ways to do it. So the industry as a whole has 148 00:06:21,840 --> 00:06:24,280 naturally grabbed onto that term conversion rate optimization. 149 00:06:24,280 --> 00:06:26,760 But we can even equally call this revenue optimization. 150 00:06:26,760 --> 00:06:29,560 And we've even run tests for clients which have been 151 00:06:29,560 --> 00:06:31,560 incredibly successful. The conversion rates dropped, 152 00:06:32,200 --> 00:06:34,760 yes, a successful test where the conversion rates dropped. 153 00:06:35,040 --> 00:06:37,000 What's happened is the average order value was increased. 154 00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:40,360 So now we're getting slightly less orders per 100 or per 1000 155 00:06:40,360 --> 00:06:44,040 people that land on the website, which means the conversion rate 156 00:06:44,040 --> 00:06:46,040 metric has actually dropped. But the average order value has 157 00:06:46,040 --> 00:06:49,560 gone up so much, we're now making more revenue per user. 158 00:06:49,560 --> 00:06:52,680 And again, if you look at those paid channels, the revenue per 159 00:06:52,680 --> 00:06:55,080 user relates directly to cost per click. 160 00:06:55,280 --> 00:06:57,240 So you pay Google, say a dollar for a click. 161 00:06:57,560 --> 00:07:00,240 And if the average revenue per user on the website is anything 162 00:07:00,240 --> 00:07:03,680 less than $3, well, you're losing money because you you 163 00:07:03,680 --> 00:07:06,080 need to make a three to one Roy to break even if those are your 164 00:07:06,080 --> 00:07:08,840 metrics. So let's talk about 5 things 165 00:07:08,840 --> 00:07:11,000 that you should consider when you're optimizing for both SEO 166 00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:12,640 and CRO together. And if you're not doing them 167 00:07:12,640 --> 00:07:16,000 together, give us a call like you should be absolutely doing 168 00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:19,520 this. So point #1 when we roll out SEO 169 00:07:19,520 --> 00:07:21,960 changes, and I will be completely transparent and say 170 00:07:21,960 --> 00:07:24,800 we do quite often forget to do this ourselves. 171 00:07:25,520 --> 00:07:28,200 But the theory today that I want to share and what we're doing 172 00:07:28,200 --> 00:07:30,080 more and more of and everyone should be doing more of is 173 00:07:30,080 --> 00:07:33,920 actually running an AB test on some of the more content related 174 00:07:33,920 --> 00:07:38,200 changes to SEO. So as an example, say you go on 175 00:07:38,200 --> 00:07:40,400 a collection page and you've got your H1 and then a list of 176 00:07:40,400 --> 00:07:43,760 products and then the footer. That is based on my experience, 177 00:07:43,760 --> 00:07:46,160 99% of the time, not 100, but 99%. 178 00:07:46,160 --> 00:07:49,080 That's a not a very good or well optimized collection. 179 00:07:49,360 --> 00:07:51,840 What you really want is a description to welcome people 180 00:07:51,840 --> 00:07:53,760 because if you do your SEO well, they're going to land on that 181 00:07:53,760 --> 00:07:54,680 collection. There's going to be a 182 00:07:54,680 --> 00:07:56,400 description at the top. You might have some FAQ 183 00:07:56,520 --> 00:07:57,840 somewhere. You might have some buttons 184 00:07:57,840 --> 00:07:59,960 saying these are some other collections you could go to. 185 00:08:00,320 --> 00:08:02,400 You might have a button saying, here's our buying guide. 186 00:08:02,400 --> 00:08:04,840 So say you were looking at cotton fitted bed sheets. 187 00:08:04,840 --> 00:08:07,560 As a completely random example, cotton fitted bed sheets. 188 00:08:07,680 --> 00:08:09,840 You might have a buying guide how to buy the right sheets for 189 00:08:09,840 --> 00:08:12,840 your bed and how to get the right size or what type of 190 00:08:12,840 --> 00:08:15,840 cotton do you want or what tog of duvet would you like to go 191 00:08:15,880 --> 00:08:18,440 with with your bed. So buying guides are quite good. 192 00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:20,560 Does it work better if you have an image on there? 193 00:08:20,560 --> 00:08:22,880 And we optimize the image for SEO and then the image could 194 00:08:22,880 --> 00:08:25,040 come out when someone's searching for cotton for the bed 195 00:08:25,040 --> 00:08:28,240 sheets. Do we want to have within that 196 00:08:28,240 --> 00:08:30,000 description links going out to other places? 197 00:08:30,000 --> 00:08:31,760 Do you want to have most of that description hidden? 198 00:08:31,760 --> 00:08:33,159 Do you want to read more button to expand it? 199 00:08:33,159 --> 00:08:34,240 Do you want the whole thing visible? 200 00:08:34,600 --> 00:08:37,799 The problem sometimes with SEO is we go, well, content is king 201 00:08:37,799 --> 00:08:39,320 in SEO. It's a phrase you'll hear a lot. 202 00:08:39,799 --> 00:08:42,280 So we roll out all these SEO changes and put all this extra 203 00:08:42,280 --> 00:08:45,400 content on there. We don't actually know if a 204 00:08:46,280 --> 00:08:48,560 conversion rate has dropped in the process or average order 205 00:08:48,560 --> 00:08:51,280 values dropped or revenues dropped overall, but the volumes 206 00:08:51,280 --> 00:08:54,040 higher because we've pleased the the search engine gods. 207 00:08:54,840 --> 00:08:56,640 And B, and this one's really, really important. 208 00:08:56,640 --> 00:09:01,440 Actually, B, if we change three things at once and conversion 209 00:09:01,440 --> 00:09:04,000 rate's gone up and Seo's gone up, what if two were effective 210 00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:07,000 and one wasn't? Wouldn't you want to know which 211 00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:09,320 one wasn't? And obviously running an AB 212 00:09:09,320 --> 00:09:12,000 test, we got two versions of that page and people see a 213 00:09:12,000 --> 00:09:14,000 version each. And, and we use quite a few apps 214 00:09:14,000 --> 00:09:16,280 for this as well. In fact, one of our sponsors 215 00:09:16,280 --> 00:09:19,080 might actually be a CRO testing tool app, which which we're 216 00:09:19,080 --> 00:09:20,200 talking to. We're trying to trying to get 217 00:09:20,200 --> 00:09:22,720 them involved because it's a lovely piece of tech that that 218 00:09:22,720 --> 00:09:24,960 we love using. But certainly with those AB 219 00:09:25,040 --> 00:09:26,800 tests, you can go, all right. When we added that big 220 00:09:26,800 --> 00:09:28,560 description on top of the collection, it lowered revenue. 221 00:09:28,560 --> 00:09:30,840 But when we added buttons at the top to say you're currently 222 00:09:30,840 --> 00:09:34,240 looking at fitted cotton bed sheets and actually then buttons 223 00:09:34,240 --> 00:09:36,520 going into like do you want single, double, king size, queen 224 00:09:36,520 --> 00:09:38,400 size, etcetera and go through the different sizes. 225 00:09:38,560 --> 00:09:40,400 When we added those buttons, conversion rate went up. 226 00:09:40,840 --> 00:09:42,880 So actually we've learned that we still want the description 227 00:09:42,880 --> 00:09:45,440 for SEO, but the top of the page is lowered conversion. 228 00:09:45,440 --> 00:09:48,480 So we're going to put it at the bottom of the to still get that 229 00:09:48,480 --> 00:09:50,680 content on there. So you see how the AB test now 230 00:09:50,680 --> 00:09:53,800 is driven, an uplifting conversion and an uplifting SEO 231 00:09:53,800 --> 00:09:56,600 at the same time. So I'd suggest testing all these 232 00:09:56,600 --> 00:09:58,960 things, whether it's on collections, on products and 233 00:09:58,960 --> 00:10:01,520 homepage, any buying guides, that sort of thing. 234 00:10:01,520 --> 00:10:03,920 When you're making a drastic change to one, why don't make 2 235 00:10:03,920 --> 00:10:06,920 versions and run a test. If the test is inconclusive, you 236 00:10:06,920 --> 00:10:08,120 just choose the one that you like. 237 00:10:08,120 --> 00:10:11,040 If the test is conclusive, either better or worse, either 238 00:10:11,040 --> 00:10:13,200 you've gone. Our customers really like more 239 00:10:13,200 --> 00:10:16,360 information and we now need to write more information for all 240 00:10:16,360 --> 00:10:18,560 collections, all products, all blog posts, all buying guides, 241 00:10:18,560 --> 00:10:20,360 whatever that particular test was. 242 00:10:20,760 --> 00:10:23,280 All we've learnt that our customers actually just want to 243 00:10:23,280 --> 00:10:25,240 kind of click, click and buy very, very quickly. 244 00:10:25,440 --> 00:10:26,920 It's a low barrier to entry this product. 245 00:10:26,920 --> 00:10:29,440 We just need to make it easy. Well, let's not write loads of 246 00:10:29,440 --> 00:10:31,280 content actually for search engines. 247 00:10:31,280 --> 00:10:33,200 We need to go. These are the five key messages 248 00:10:33,200 --> 00:10:35,320 we want to get across and how do we do it in minimal words and 249 00:10:35,320 --> 00:10:36,840 how do we design that on the page? 250 00:10:37,200 --> 00:10:39,840 And again, let's test that new layout, that new design compared 251 00:10:39,840 --> 00:10:42,640 to the old one and see how much uplift that we're going to get 252 00:10:42,640 --> 00:10:45,760 from that. So that testing bit, I'll be 253 00:10:45,760 --> 00:10:48,200 transparent, say, we've seen several clients over the years 254 00:10:48,200 --> 00:10:51,080 who we wake up one morning and there's been a big decline in 255 00:10:51,080 --> 00:10:54,840 conversion, a big decline in PPCROIA, big decline in SEO 256 00:10:54,840 --> 00:10:57,440 revenue where traffic's actually stayed the same. 257 00:10:57,440 --> 00:10:59,880 And then we're frantically kind of scrambling around going what 258 00:10:59,880 --> 00:11:00,840 did that? And it's like, Oh my gosh, we've 259 00:11:00,840 --> 00:11:03,320 made 20 changes over the last three weeks, all quite 260 00:11:03,320 --> 00:11:05,520 significant. We don't know what's actually 261 00:11:05,520 --> 00:11:07,800 broken the site. We don't know what therefore 262 00:11:07,800 --> 00:11:09,720 what to fix. So we're just going to reverse 263 00:11:09,720 --> 00:11:11,400 all of the changes now and hope for the best. 264 00:11:11,400 --> 00:11:13,560 And it's what a terrible way to be doing marketing when you 265 00:11:13,560 --> 00:11:18,080 could test stuff on your site. So the first one is AB testing a 266 00:11:18,080 --> 00:11:21,120 lot of that SEO stuff that you want to roll out, especially 267 00:11:21,120 --> 00:11:26,840 when it is content as well. So second point, blogs, we have 268 00:11:26,840 --> 00:11:30,920 walked into so many brands over the years that have a blog and 269 00:11:30,920 --> 00:11:33,280 there's loads of content going out on that blog. 270 00:11:34,160 --> 00:11:36,320 But the problem is, and I've had this even with some of our own 271 00:11:36,320 --> 00:11:38,480 clients where they, they're like, why don't you send us more 272 00:11:38,480 --> 00:11:40,240 blog posts and whatever. And we look at the data and we 273 00:11:40,240 --> 00:11:42,920 say, do you know what? When people read A blog post, 274 00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:47,040 there's no evidence in GA 4, for example, or Microsoft clarity to 275 00:11:47,040 --> 00:11:49,680 say that when someone sees A blog or reads A blog, they're 276 00:11:49,680 --> 00:11:53,760 actually going to convert later or even in that journey order. 277 00:11:53,760 --> 00:11:57,040 That helps conversion at all. We sometimes find that blogs 278 00:11:57,040 --> 00:11:59,800 don't rank themselves at all. Google just doesn't see you as 279 00:11:59,800 --> 00:12:03,400 an authority to talk about stuff in your space, whether it's a 280 00:12:03,400 --> 00:12:05,480 blog about things associated with your product or blog 281 00:12:05,480 --> 00:12:06,520 specifically about your products. 282 00:12:06,920 --> 00:12:09,600 So it's a, it's a really fine balance here of working out what 283 00:12:09,600 --> 00:12:13,040 is the place for a blog. And the point here is if the 284 00:12:13,040 --> 00:12:16,160 blog itself, again, coming back to the whole hypothesis of 285 00:12:16,160 --> 00:12:18,880 today, as we could do CRO and SEO at the same time, doing the 286 00:12:18,880 --> 00:12:21,160 same thing. When we're thinking about that, 287 00:12:21,160 --> 00:12:24,440 if the blogs themselves aren't driving conversion and if the 288 00:12:24,440 --> 00:12:27,480 blogs aren't helping us increase conversion, they're not ranking 289 00:12:27,480 --> 00:12:30,040 on SEO and driving traffic in, or they are and they are driving 290 00:12:30,040 --> 00:12:32,600 traffic, but no one's buying, what's the point? 291 00:12:32,640 --> 00:12:35,040 Like content is incredibly expensive to create. 292 00:12:35,600 --> 00:12:37,080 And so there's a few options for this. 293 00:12:37,080 --> 00:12:39,400 You can either rethink how we do our blog content. 294 00:12:39,400 --> 00:12:42,600 You could have a think about, is it, is it a blog or actually, is 295 00:12:42,600 --> 00:12:46,120 it useful information or is it user guides or is it we? 296 00:12:46,160 --> 00:12:48,520 We, we did one with an energy company years ago where we did 297 00:12:48,520 --> 00:12:50,840 lots and lots of guides about how to take an electricity meter 298 00:12:50,840 --> 00:12:52,360 reading. I don't even know if you guys 299 00:12:52,360 --> 00:12:54,800 have meters in the US like that or if it works differently. 300 00:12:54,800 --> 00:12:57,920 But in the UK, we literally have a box inside of our houses or 301 00:12:57,920 --> 00:13:00,120 our offices and buildings. You've opened the box with a 302 00:13:00,120 --> 00:13:01,480 special little key that they give you. 303 00:13:02,080 --> 00:13:04,880 You open it up and there's a thing reading how many kilowatts 304 00:13:04,880 --> 00:13:08,960 of energy you've used in your in that building in whatever space 305 00:13:08,960 --> 00:13:10,840 and time. And you used to before smart 306 00:13:10,840 --> 00:13:12,400 meters, you had to upload that manually. 307 00:13:12,560 --> 00:13:14,880 So we wrote some guides for certainly for our younger 308 00:13:15,120 --> 00:13:18,320 customers, our students who were how do you actually read this 309 00:13:18,320 --> 00:13:19,200 thing? How do you access it? 310 00:13:19,200 --> 00:13:21,680 What do the numbers mean and what's good, what's bad? 311 00:13:21,680 --> 00:13:23,320 When do I need to contact the energy company? 312 00:13:23,320 --> 00:13:25,800 Will they come out and take one, etcetera, etcetera, take meter 313 00:13:25,800 --> 00:13:27,400 reading, etcetera. We built lots of really good 314 00:13:27,400 --> 00:13:29,600 content like that because we were giving information. 315 00:13:29,600 --> 00:13:32,640 People then did start signing up or at least inquiring about, you 316 00:13:32,640 --> 00:13:35,200 know, click here to find out how much you could save with us. 317 00:13:35,480 --> 00:13:38,040 That was the call to action. So Evan's reading our article 318 00:13:38,040 --> 00:13:39,520 going well. What did my energy company tell 319 00:13:39,520 --> 00:13:41,440 me it was this easy to take a gas meter reading? 320 00:13:41,960 --> 00:13:44,160 There we go. And so I think we need to have a 321 00:13:44,160 --> 00:13:46,720 real think and a real look at how we use blog content. 322 00:13:46,720 --> 00:13:51,280 And I'd say probably for most Shopify brands, one option which 323 00:13:51,280 --> 00:13:53,760 a few of our brands have adopted that has worked incredibly well 324 00:13:53,760 --> 00:13:57,840 is actually to say we're going to use it for lifetime value 325 00:13:57,920 --> 00:14:00,480 conversion rate optimization. So what we're going to do is 326 00:14:00,480 --> 00:14:03,280 we're actually going to use blog content in our emails, not we're 327 00:14:03,280 --> 00:14:05,320 not going to try and rank necessary on SEO. 328 00:14:05,600 --> 00:14:08,120 We'll do the basics and we'll link the blogs to our main 329 00:14:08,440 --> 00:14:10,480 collections and products just so we get a few more internal 330 00:14:10,480 --> 00:14:12,640 links. And Google sees that these blogs 331 00:14:12,640 --> 00:14:14,640 are supporting other stuff. But actually, the traffic that 332 00:14:14,640 --> 00:14:16,400 lands on that blog, we're going to send it from our e-mail 333 00:14:16,400 --> 00:14:19,680 database or from our social guys, or we're going to send 334 00:14:19,680 --> 00:14:21,480 something out in the post to these guys that physically 335 00:14:21,480 --> 00:14:23,400 arrives and they can access our blog from there and access some 336 00:14:23,400 --> 00:14:26,040 good content information. It gives the blog a real 337 00:14:26,040 --> 00:14:27,680 purpose. And it means we're not just 338 00:14:27,680 --> 00:14:31,800 constantly hitting, you know, hitting the same drum and 339 00:14:31,800 --> 00:14:34,320 getting no results back from it, which is which is the problem. 340 00:14:34,320 --> 00:14:35,800 And as I say, content is really, really expensive. 341 00:14:35,800 --> 00:14:38,520 So blog, I would highly recommend having a look at what 342 00:14:38,520 --> 00:14:40,560 you're writing in it. Have any blog posts ever worked? 343 00:14:40,560 --> 00:14:43,560 If not, maybe just pause it for two or three weeks, take a step 344 00:14:43,560 --> 00:14:46,040 back and go, who's the blog for and how do we use it? 345 00:14:46,600 --> 00:14:49,840 And you could even start linking articles from product pages to 346 00:14:49,840 --> 00:14:51,440 say, hey, and if you want some more information about this, 347 00:14:51,720 --> 00:14:53,080 read this blog. But make sure that's at the 348 00:14:53,080 --> 00:14:55,240 bottom of the page. It's at the part of the page 349 00:14:55,240 --> 00:14:57,440 where someone's already seen all the information and hasn't added 350 00:14:57,480 --> 00:14:59,040 a car, hasn't made a buying decision. 351 00:14:59,360 --> 00:15:01,040 They're just trying to find as much information about this 352 00:15:01,040 --> 00:15:01,840 product. They're on the fence. 353 00:15:01,840 --> 00:15:03,800 They're undecided. That blog might be the 354 00:15:03,800 --> 00:15:05,400 difference. And you might find some of those 355 00:15:05,400 --> 00:15:07,840 tactics and techniques that that can actually start to work. 356 00:15:08,160 --> 00:15:10,240 And the other thing one brand did and it worked really 357 00:15:10,240 --> 00:15:12,760 effective for them, but won't work for most people because 358 00:15:12,760 --> 00:15:15,360 when you're reading A blog post, once you get about a paragraph 359 00:15:15,360 --> 00:15:18,520 and a half down, it would the actual text would fade to white 360 00:15:18,520 --> 00:15:21,200 and there'd be a box saying, you know, sign up to our newsletters 361 00:15:21,200 --> 00:15:23,240 or OK, give us your e-mail address and you can read the 362 00:15:23,240 --> 00:15:25,560 rest of this blog. So they actually use the blogs 363 00:15:25,560 --> 00:15:28,040 for e-mail capture. And because the people that we 364 00:15:28,040 --> 00:15:31,160 then got on the e-mail in onto e-mail within that segmentation 365 00:15:31,160 --> 00:15:34,880 purchased later, we actually could target those blogs as 366 00:15:34,880 --> 00:15:38,000 landing pages for PPC. So we tend to find an SEO. 367 00:15:38,040 --> 00:15:39,640 It's always like, well, we've got to have a blog, we've got to 368 00:15:39,640 --> 00:15:41,760 write blog posts. We actually say no. 369 00:15:41,840 --> 00:15:43,880 And it's quite a relief when we say it to clients, they're like, 370 00:15:43,880 --> 00:15:46,520 oh, glad somebody's finally said we don't have to keep writing 371 00:15:46,520 --> 00:15:48,080 these articles and chucking them out into the ether. 372 00:15:48,080 --> 00:15:50,760 So I hope that helps with blogs. It doesn't work for everybody. 373 00:15:50,800 --> 00:15:53,080 And there's a lot of depends, depends, depends I could put 374 00:15:53,080 --> 00:15:54,960 into into what I'm saying today. So if you want to have a look at 375 00:15:54,960 --> 00:15:57,160 the blog, then obviously reach out and we can give you guys a 376 00:15:57,160 --> 00:16:45,280 bit of advice on that. Use CRO, This is number 3. 377 00:16:45,280 --> 00:16:51,200 Use CRO data and tests to determine the navigation on your 378 00:16:51,200 --> 00:16:54,120 website. I'll give you a quick case study 379 00:16:54,120 --> 00:16:56,960 on this. So we were doing SEO for a dress 380 00:16:56,960 --> 00:16:59,880 company and sell lots and lots of women's dresses and they're 381 00:16:59,880 --> 00:17:04,119 in the UK, all across the UK. And we looked at the dresses and 382 00:17:04,640 --> 00:17:06,440 they were amazing products. They all had different 383 00:17:06,440 --> 00:17:09,119 materials, colours, sizes, all this kind of stuff. 384 00:17:09,839 --> 00:17:11,400 And we had a bit of a conversation with the client to 385 00:17:11,400 --> 00:17:13,640 say when we look at your navigation on your website, it's 386 00:17:13,640 --> 00:17:16,920 like shop our red dresses because they sold more Reds than 387 00:17:16,920 --> 00:17:18,800 any other colour. So shop our red dresses. 388 00:17:19,200 --> 00:17:21,880 The next one along though was not blue or black or another 389 00:17:21,880 --> 00:17:23,920 colour, which is what you might expect. 390 00:17:24,079 --> 00:17:26,359 It was red dresses. The next one was then wedding 391 00:17:26,359 --> 00:17:28,400 guest dresses. It feels a bit off. 392 00:17:28,400 --> 00:17:30,320 You certainly wouldn't wear Reds to a wedding. 393 00:17:30,360 --> 00:17:32,920 I mean some Reds would work, but you know, I'm not here to give 394 00:17:32,920 --> 00:17:35,080 star advice. But it wasn't a colour, it was a 395 00:17:35,080 --> 00:17:38,720 wedding, wedding guest dresses. Then the next one along was like 396 00:17:38,760 --> 00:17:40,440 another. That's an occasion. 397 00:17:40,440 --> 00:17:42,520 We've got colour and occasion. The next one was like another 398 00:17:42,520 --> 00:17:44,320 occasion. Then they had another one that 399 00:17:44,320 --> 00:17:47,240 was talked about like sequin dresses because there's lots of 400 00:17:47,240 --> 00:17:48,520 dresses that were covered in sequins. 401 00:17:49,200 --> 00:17:51,280 And we'd look at that and we sort of said, guys, you do 402 00:17:51,280 --> 00:17:53,760 realise there's loads of traffic for red dresses, but it's only 5 403 00:17:53,760 --> 00:17:56,600 or 10% of your product range. You've got lots of other colours 404 00:17:57,200 --> 00:17:59,320 and we realised actually these dresses we could kind of like 405 00:17:59,320 --> 00:18:01,920 almost, I don't know if you're watching this, but like I've got 406 00:18:01,920 --> 00:18:03,720 my fingers up in a sort of a four way grid. 407 00:18:03,920 --> 00:18:07,280 You've almost got like colour, material, occasion size. 408 00:18:07,560 --> 00:18:09,680 You can basically split stuff up into different buckets. 409 00:18:10,120 --> 00:18:11,960 And then you look at the navigation of the site and you 410 00:18:11,960 --> 00:18:14,560 think to yourself, how on earth are we going to fit all of this 411 00:18:14,560 --> 00:18:16,920 into the NAV? Like it's, it's a lot of stuff 412 00:18:16,920 --> 00:18:18,440 to put in here. But from an SEO point of view, 413 00:18:18,440 --> 00:18:19,640 we obviously want all of these things. 414 00:18:19,640 --> 00:18:22,200 We want, we want to rank well for colours, for materials, for 415 00:18:22,200 --> 00:18:24,760 occasions, for everything. And you know, there's a lot to 416 00:18:24,760 --> 00:18:26,560 do here. So what we did in the end is we, 417 00:18:26,560 --> 00:18:30,000 we did a lot of keyword research and we looked at, we, we added 418 00:18:30,000 --> 00:18:32,000 up the totals of all of those keywords in terms of their 419 00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:34,480 search volumes in the UK on Google. 420 00:18:34,880 --> 00:18:37,280 And we basically came to a conclusion and tried to work out 421 00:18:37,280 --> 00:18:41,400 that if we had colours left to right across the top is the main 422 00:18:41,400 --> 00:18:43,280 things. We had this much available 423 00:18:43,480 --> 00:18:45,560 traffic available to us. And if we did it by material, it 424 00:18:45,560 --> 00:18:47,200 would be this, if we did it by occasion, it would be this, 425 00:18:47,200 --> 00:18:49,160 etcetera, etcetera. So we went down the route of 426 00:18:49,160 --> 00:18:51,920 choosing the biggest one and I think it was occasions. 427 00:18:51,920 --> 00:18:54,040 So when you're on the sites like are you trying to get a prom 428 00:18:54,040 --> 00:18:56,440 dress, a wedding dress, a wedding guest dress? 429 00:18:56,440 --> 00:18:59,560 It's a bit of a mouthful and and different types of occasions you 430 00:18:59,560 --> 00:19:01,600 might be buying a dress for. So we had those across the top 431 00:19:01,600 --> 00:19:04,360 and then on the right hand side, the last bit said shop by with a 432 00:19:04,360 --> 00:19:07,480 down arrow, specifically without the down arrow. 433 00:19:07,480 --> 00:19:09,240 It didn't work. No one went there. 434 00:19:09,520 --> 00:19:11,840 Added a down arrow to show there's a big mega menu that's 435 00:19:11,840 --> 00:19:14,320 going to arrive when you do that hover over and it just had the 436 00:19:14,320 --> 00:19:16,400 shop by this shop by this shop. But listen about 7 or 8 437 00:19:16,400 --> 00:19:19,400 different ways you could shop our whole range of dresses and 438 00:19:19,400 --> 00:19:21,320 you click on one, it went to a page that wasn't full of 439 00:19:21,320 --> 00:19:23,480 products. It was tiled so you could drill 440 00:19:23,480 --> 00:19:25,120 down. So you'd choose like shop, buy 441 00:19:25,680 --> 00:19:27,640 material. And then it would go to a page 442 00:19:27,640 --> 00:19:29,800 that had eight big blocks that would say what the materials 443 00:19:29,800 --> 00:19:31,160 are. And each picture had somebody 444 00:19:31,160 --> 00:19:35,200 making a dress in that material from their actual factory 445 00:19:35,200 --> 00:19:37,800 wearing, you know, a jumper or a polo shirt or something with 446 00:19:37,800 --> 00:19:39,960 their branding on it especially. That's a real person making a 447 00:19:39,960 --> 00:19:41,840 product because these guys manufacture their own products. 448 00:19:41,840 --> 00:19:44,400 And we subtly got that really good USP in there and we broke 449 00:19:44,400 --> 00:19:48,040 the site down like that. Now I started this point where 450 00:19:48,040 --> 00:19:49,960 saying you CRO data and I've just gone down the route of 451 00:19:49,960 --> 00:19:53,360 telling you about SEO data. So that's the why we would want 452 00:19:53,400 --> 00:19:55,320 a collection for every single different facet. 453 00:19:55,320 --> 00:19:58,000 And this is a bit of our secret sauce at the agency, which I'm 454 00:19:58,000 --> 00:19:59,920 sharing with you guys. We do this for a lot of brands 455 00:19:59,920 --> 00:20:02,720 and it works incredibly well. Like we, we sometimes tenfold 456 00:20:02,720 --> 00:20:04,840 their traffic in a year or two doing this. 457 00:20:04,840 --> 00:20:06,440 It's it's difficult. It's not easy. 458 00:20:07,160 --> 00:20:09,000 To get it all right and to get them all created. 459 00:20:09,200 --> 00:20:12,200 But even today we're uploading, I think it's about 920 460 00:20:12,200 --> 00:20:15,040 collections to a client's website, all of a giant sheet 461 00:20:15,040 --> 00:20:17,360 straight into Shopify to make all these collections. 462 00:20:17,360 --> 00:20:20,360 And then the navigation and how the site works and functions is 463 00:20:20,600 --> 00:20:24,280 is going to kick in from there. The CRO bit, though, this bit's 464 00:20:24,280 --> 00:20:27,240 really interesting. So we chose based on SEO search 465 00:20:27,240 --> 00:20:30,480 volume the occasions, but using a tool like Microsoft Clarity, 466 00:20:30,480 --> 00:20:32,440 which I've mentioned it once already, get Microsoft Clarity 467 00:20:32,440 --> 00:20:33,400 on the site if you haven't already. 468 00:20:33,400 --> 00:20:35,400 It might slow page speed down slightly. 469 00:20:35,400 --> 00:20:39,200 And as an SEO guy, I don't like slow pages, but get it on your 470 00:20:39,200 --> 00:20:41,120 site even just for a week or two, collect some data, turn it 471 00:20:41,120 --> 00:20:42,760 back off or keep it on indefinitely if it's not 472 00:20:42,760 --> 00:20:43,800 affecting your page speed too much. 473 00:20:43,800 --> 00:20:45,400 Depends how you coded your theme and stuff. 474 00:20:45,840 --> 00:20:48,360 But get that on the site and you can see how people are using the 475 00:20:48,360 --> 00:20:50,680 site. So what we then did is we then 476 00:20:50,680 --> 00:20:53,040 looked at how many people were hovering over that shop by to 477 00:20:53,040 --> 00:20:56,680 bring up all the different ways you could shop the site and it 478 00:20:56,680 --> 00:20:58,800 wasn't loads of people and they were going through the 479 00:20:58,800 --> 00:21:01,120 occasions. But then we realised most people 480 00:21:01,120 --> 00:21:03,600 were not actually buying or landing on an occasion 481 00:21:03,600 --> 00:21:07,200 collection from SEO, it was through other things. 482 00:21:07,440 --> 00:21:08,320 So we then went, do you know what? 483 00:21:08,320 --> 00:21:10,480 We've chosen occasion because of the total search volume 484 00:21:10,480 --> 00:21:13,600 opportunity, but that's not how our customers are actually 485 00:21:13,600 --> 00:21:16,280 buying from us. So we then ended up changing it 486 00:21:16,440 --> 00:21:20,080 and we actually went for more of a functional dresses, but what I 487 00:21:20,080 --> 00:21:22,240 didn't say earlier, dresses by style. 488 00:21:22,480 --> 00:21:25,440 So we then had them split by cocktail dresses, maxi dresses, 489 00:21:25,720 --> 00:21:27,720 etcetera, etcetera. And yeah, you'd be surprised. 490 00:21:27,720 --> 00:21:30,080 I've been working a long time. I know a lot about dresses and a 491 00:21:30,080 --> 00:21:32,520 whole range of other random topics, but we had it split by 492 00:21:32,520 --> 00:21:36,000 that and we realized that way. And then we had it split by 493 00:21:36,000 --> 00:21:38,600 those and then we had one drop down that was like collections. 494 00:21:38,720 --> 00:21:41,040 It was called and under collections was what we had 495 00:21:41,040 --> 00:21:42,600 called it. So it was like our spring summer 496 00:21:42,600 --> 00:21:45,120 range. This is our we had an ocean 497 00:21:45,120 --> 00:21:47,000 themed range. I forget the name of it, but it 498 00:21:47,000 --> 00:21:48,920 was it was on there as well, probably called like the 499 00:21:48,920 --> 00:21:51,600 Cornwall range or something. So we had a few things under the 500 00:21:51,600 --> 00:21:52,920 collection. So you could shop more of a 501 00:21:52,920 --> 00:21:55,720 holistic kind of us pushing brand and making it a bit more 502 00:21:55,720 --> 00:21:58,400 entertaining for you way of shopping with some really cool 503 00:21:58,400 --> 00:22:00,120 coloured collections as well when you landed on them. 504 00:22:00,120 --> 00:22:03,960 Very themed around like the beach you see most people 505 00:22:03,960 --> 00:22:05,480 shopped by. I just want, I want a prom 506 00:22:05,480 --> 00:22:07,880 dress, sorry, I want a maxi dress, I want a cocktail dress 507 00:22:07,880 --> 00:22:09,640 etcetera. That worked for us. 508 00:22:09,640 --> 00:22:11,360 We were quite functional with the way we presented the 509 00:22:11,360 --> 00:22:12,720 dresses. We had one drop down for 510 00:22:12,720 --> 00:22:15,520 collections, one for shop by and what we did is we made the 511 00:22:15,520 --> 00:22:17,200 collections in shop by a slightly different colour. 512 00:22:17,400 --> 00:22:19,680 We now found that the people using our menu went up 513 00:22:19,680 --> 00:22:21,520 significantly. I can't remember the numbers but 514 00:22:21,520 --> 00:22:23,280 I remember it being significant and they were like we need to 515 00:22:23,280 --> 00:22:25,520 just lock this menu and never touch it ever again. 516 00:22:25,720 --> 00:22:27,840 Obviously to evolve it a bit but it worked so well. 517 00:22:27,920 --> 00:22:29,920 Having the other two in a different colour meant that some 518 00:22:29,920 --> 00:22:32,000 people would start their journey one way, then they go another 519 00:22:32,000 --> 00:22:34,520 way, then they're going to another way when and this is 520 00:22:34,520 --> 00:22:36,800 all, this is all a prediction, I'm about to say. 521 00:22:36,800 --> 00:22:40,920 But we predicted that previously because it wasn't obvious even 522 00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:42,520 there was a shop, shop by drop down. 523 00:22:42,880 --> 00:22:45,560 We predicted that if people couldn't find it through the 524 00:22:45,560 --> 00:22:48,400 main, the main set of collections, they would actually 525 00:22:48,400 --> 00:22:50,960 go off to another website to go and find something or they just 526 00:22:50,960 --> 00:22:53,200 go on Google and search again. And they might still end up on 527 00:22:53,200 --> 00:22:54,680 our website in one of those collections. 528 00:22:54,680 --> 00:22:58,040 But felt like a, a dead, or we call it orphaned collection. 529 00:22:58,040 --> 00:23:00,680 A collection you can't link to or get to, even though you 530 00:23:00,680 --> 00:23:02,240 could. So by making the more obvious, 531 00:23:02,560 --> 00:23:04,360 the usability of the site was fantastic. 532 00:23:04,360 --> 00:23:05,880 And because more people were landing on the site and 533 00:23:05,880 --> 00:23:08,680 purchasing products, that alone, Google started lifting up our 534 00:23:08,680 --> 00:23:10,400 rankings. We were a fantastic option to be 535 00:23:10,400 --> 00:23:12,720 ranked on Google. So I appreciate I'm saying a lot 536 00:23:12,720 --> 00:23:15,560 here, but using that CRO data of how people navigate the site 537 00:23:15,560 --> 00:23:17,840 coupled with what the SEO opportunity is and you probably 538 00:23:17,840 --> 00:23:20,640 won't get it right first time. So make a big change to it, see 539 00:23:20,640 --> 00:23:23,320 what happens and analyse that data and then then change it 540 00:23:23,320 --> 00:23:28,920 again #4 out of five, this one, Sabir was on the show a few 541 00:23:28,920 --> 00:23:30,640 weeks ago. I've had, I think, more emails 542 00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:32,840 about Sabir's episode than I've had from any others in a long 543 00:23:32,840 --> 00:23:34,440 time. So if you didn't hear Sabir's 544 00:23:34,440 --> 00:23:37,160 episode, go and check it out. Sabir, I haven't got the number 545 00:23:37,520 --> 00:23:40,680 written in front of me, but he he's helped a ton of brands 546 00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:42,440 grow. I think it was in the first 547 00:23:42,440 --> 00:23:45,240 three months of the first year. They've grown significantly, 548 00:23:45,240 --> 00:23:48,680 like 100 and something percent on average last year in 2024. 549 00:23:48,680 --> 00:23:50,560 So go and catch his episode if you haven't. 550 00:23:50,560 --> 00:23:52,920 Obviously, out of respect, finish this episode first 551 00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:55,480 because this is my episode. No, you can go and listen to me. 552 00:23:55,480 --> 00:23:58,600 It's absolutely fine. I feature on both, but page 553 00:23:58,600 --> 00:24:01,160 speed is something he spoke about so much. 554 00:24:01,440 --> 00:24:03,600 Page B kills conversion. He said the number one thing 555 00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:06,280 they do as soon as they come into any Shopify brand is we've 556 00:24:06,280 --> 00:24:08,520 got to improve that page speed. So we've got to trim back some 557 00:24:08,520 --> 00:24:11,560 apps and that sort of thing. We did it with a client recently 558 00:24:11,600 --> 00:24:14,000 and this is where you can use CRO to help with page speed. 559 00:24:14,560 --> 00:24:16,920 We did it with a client recently where we set up an AB test. 560 00:24:16,920 --> 00:24:18,960 So obviously we normally force down the CRO route and what 561 00:24:18,960 --> 00:24:21,040 we're monitoring revenue, average order value and 562 00:24:21,040 --> 00:24:24,120 conversion rate. So it was a CROAB test that we 563 00:24:24,120 --> 00:24:26,600 did where we basically took out all of the apps that just did 564 00:24:26,600 --> 00:24:28,720 fun stuff and added bits of functionality. 565 00:24:29,120 --> 00:24:32,000 We took them all out of a version B of a site and ran a 566 00:24:32,000 --> 00:24:35,040 test for a week. At the end of that week, the one 567 00:24:35,040 --> 00:24:37,880 with all the apps was still converting better, but we knew 568 00:24:37,880 --> 00:24:41,000 we needed to change something. So Week 2 and they they had 569 00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:43,280 enough traffic to do it weekly. Sometimes if your traffic levels 570 00:24:43,280 --> 00:24:46,720 aren't quite high enough, you probably need 5050 thousand to 571 00:24:46,720 --> 00:24:50,000 100,000 people to hit the site to conclude a test. 572 00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:52,840 I would say at bare minimum, ideally more, but at bare 573 00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:56,080 minimum. So and to do that, we then Week 574 00:24:56,080 --> 00:24:59,080 2, because they had enough traffic, week two, we then just 575 00:24:59,080 --> 00:25:01,360 took one app out and compared the conversion rate. 576 00:25:01,360 --> 00:25:03,840 Week 3, we put that app back in and then we compared the next 577 00:25:03,840 --> 00:25:07,200 one and did another test and we realized exactly which apps were 578 00:25:07,200 --> 00:25:09,440 increasing conversion and which apps were decreasing conversion. 579 00:25:09,720 --> 00:25:11,760 I've seen some of your sites guys, you guys reach out to me 580 00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:13,400 all the time. Some of you have that wheel of 581 00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:15,080 fortune that spins and you get a discount. 582 00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:18,320 Like if it works for you, great. If it doesn't take it off. 583 00:25:18,680 --> 00:25:20,800 A lot of the time that doesn't work, but sometimes it does. 584 00:25:21,240 --> 00:25:23,520 Run an AB test, have it on one version of your theme, don't 585 00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:25,800 have it on another. You can even use apps in Shopify 586 00:25:25,800 --> 00:25:29,000 now to run tests where you've got 22 templates for this for 587 00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:31,840 your collections and you just allocate half your collections 588 00:25:31,840 --> 00:25:33,520 to the template A and half to template B. 589 00:25:33,880 --> 00:25:38,000 Or you can use a tool, a paid, paid app within Shopify and use 590 00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:40,640 a tool to actually split it automatically between template A 591 00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:43,760 template B or theme A theme B. That's what we tend to do with 592 00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:46,880 with our clients because that app, the real thing you get, you 593 00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:49,440 get your money's worth from the app is it gives you results in a 594 00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:51,880 real time basis. We started to the test just 595 00:25:51,880 --> 00:25:54,560 yesterday and about four hours after we started it, four of us 596 00:25:54,560 --> 00:25:56,480 were gathered around a computer here in the office going like, 597 00:25:56,840 --> 00:26:00,440 Oh my gosh, 80% revenue uplift. It has balanced out this 598 00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:01,880 morning. It's not quite as high as 80, 599 00:26:01,880 --> 00:26:03,600 but the version we're testing is better. 600 00:26:03,840 --> 00:26:06,160 We knew it would be better. We wanted to know how much 601 00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:08,720 better because if it's a lot better, we're going to change 602 00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:11,080 the test again. So with page speed, it normally 603 00:26:11,080 --> 00:26:13,480 is apps in Shopify. So I'm going to focus on that 604 00:26:13,520 --> 00:26:16,640 and say to you guys that my recommendation is run an AB test 605 00:26:16,640 --> 00:26:19,240 where you start turning apps off, removing apps from the 606 00:26:19,240 --> 00:26:22,320 theme or whatever to to reduce that page load time. 607 00:26:22,560 --> 00:26:24,560 If you find out which apps people resonate with and which 608 00:26:24,560 --> 00:26:27,160 ones they don't kill all the ones that they don't, run a 609 00:26:27,160 --> 00:26:31,200 final AB test with none of those in versus your original and see 610 00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:32,240 if that conversion rate's gone up. 611 00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:33,960 Because what you don't want to do is you want to, you don't 612 00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:36,320 want to find that it's like 1 app has an increase, one app has 613 00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:37,960 an increase. But if we take them all out, the 614 00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:40,040 website functionality then drops and people don't trust us. 615 00:26:40,040 --> 00:26:41,640 So there's loads of things like that. 616 00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:43,840 The the problem we've got with data all the time, and I say 617 00:26:43,840 --> 00:26:46,560 it's all the time on the shows and the data will tell you 618 00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:49,400 what's happened, but it won't tell you why you need to talk to 619 00:26:49,400 --> 00:26:51,520 your customers. Microsoft Clarity starts to 620 00:26:51,560 --> 00:26:53,360 answer the why a little bit more because you can watch people 621 00:26:53,360 --> 00:26:55,480 actually click on the screen and clicking on stuff and their 622 00:26:55,480 --> 00:26:57,600 mouse moving and you can watch them, which we're going to talk 623 00:26:57,600 --> 00:26:59,440 about in the next one. You can watch what they do. 624 00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:04,440 So moving seamlessly on to .51 of the things that they do is 625 00:27:04,440 --> 00:27:06,600 they will click on, we get what's called dead clicks, 626 00:27:06,680 --> 00:27:08,440 they'll click on stuff that isn't linkable. 627 00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:10,600 So they'll be clicking on like, and we had this with a client 628 00:27:10,600 --> 00:27:13,400 recently, lots of people on mobile trying to buy quite 629 00:27:13,400 --> 00:27:16,320 expensive items and they were trying to on mobile click on the 630 00:27:16,320 --> 00:27:18,040 image. And what would you expect 631 00:27:18,040 --> 00:27:20,000 happens when you click on the image, the image expands and you 632 00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:21,600 can zoom in and you can scroll about. 633 00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:24,040 Not on their website, click the image, nothing happens. 634 00:27:24,280 --> 00:27:26,160 And we saw lots of what were called dead clicks and what are 635 00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:28,560 called rage clicks on mobile when people were trying to click 636 00:27:28,560 --> 00:27:31,920 on the image to expand the product image to see it bigger 637 00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:34,440 on a small device. So I've got my phone here, you 638 00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:36,240 click on the image and then you can scroll about. 639 00:27:36,520 --> 00:27:38,840 We even went one stage, one step further with the client a while 640 00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:41,400 ago where you could actually use augmented reality and you could 641 00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:44,400 like choose the item you wanted. I'm trying not to look at my 642 00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:47,040 notifications while I'm doing this as well to distract me, but 643 00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:48,600 you could click on the item you wanted. 644 00:27:48,800 --> 00:27:51,360 It would then enable the camera and you could see the item 645 00:27:51,360 --> 00:27:55,120 actually in your room. We did it with a, a company that 646 00:27:55,120 --> 00:27:57,560 sold lots of art. So you could put a picture, you 647 00:27:57,560 --> 00:27:59,600 could put a picture on your wall using your phone and see what it 648 00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:01,680 would look like in the room and go, Oh, that really matches our 649 00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:03,760 sofa actually. And you could put 10 items in 650 00:28:03,760 --> 00:28:05,240 your car and just swish between them. 651 00:28:05,600 --> 00:28:07,880 That's a really good way of improving conversion rate. 652 00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:10,080 But again, you can test it only offer that functionality on 653 00:28:10,320 --> 00:28:12,960 version B to see how different it is to to version A. 654 00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:15,440 But certainly this, this clicking thing, this people 655 00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:17,520 clicking on dead things, people rage clicking on stuff. 656 00:28:17,880 --> 00:28:20,640 Sometimes people start rage clicking when the page speeds so 657 00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:22,800 bad they don't realise it's actually started loading because 658 00:28:22,800 --> 00:28:25,320 nothing's happened so long. So they start rage clicking on 659 00:28:25,320 --> 00:28:27,160 your site. So that's often, often a sign 660 00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:30,200 that your page speed is so bad. And what this leads us to 661 00:28:30,200 --> 00:28:32,360 though, seeing when people are dead clicking and rage clicking, 662 00:28:33,200 --> 00:28:35,200 what we look at from an SEO point of view, again, bringing 663 00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:37,920 that CRO and SEO together from an SEO point of view, we start 664 00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:41,200 looking at internal linking and going, hang on a minute, we need 665 00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:42,760 to improve our internal links here. 666 00:28:42,760 --> 00:28:45,720 Because if we improve our internal links, when people try 667 00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:47,680 and click on this thing, and it might not be an image, it might 668 00:28:47,880 --> 00:28:50,600 be what looks like a button or what looks like a read more. 669 00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:54,520 Or they might see the word delivery information and there's 670 00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:56,560 like one line underneath it and they think the delivery 671 00:28:56,560 --> 00:28:58,800 information thing is clickable. So clicking it going, there must 672 00:28:58,800 --> 00:29:01,000 be more information delivery than that, you know, So this is 673 00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:03,560 a really precious item or I'm not based in your country, so I 674 00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:04,520 want to know about your Internet. 675 00:29:04,520 --> 00:29:06,440 Reassure me your international delivery is any good. 676 00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:09,760 So people trying to click on that to actually visit a 677 00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:13,040 delivery page or have a delivery kind of pop up that pops up all 678 00:29:13,040 --> 00:29:14,600 the information and the information expands. 679 00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:17,320 Maybe try doing that and see if that increases conversion rate 680 00:29:17,360 --> 00:29:20,000 by making that happen. But from an SCO point of view, 681 00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:22,560 we're looking at internal links. Maybe we're trying to click 682 00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:25,240 OnStar 4 or using a CRO tool like Microsoft Clarity. 683 00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:27,080 Where do people click from a product page? 684 00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:29,200 Once they add to cart, what do they do next? 685 00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:31,680 So you could filter the whole Microsoft Clarity by just people 686 00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:34,080 that have added to cart and then go and watch some of those 687 00:29:34,080 --> 00:29:36,480 videos and go, OK, when this person's added to cart, they go 688 00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:38,600 back, they click on the logo and start their journey again at the 689 00:29:38,600 --> 00:29:41,160 home page and start finding the next thing or this person added 690 00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:42,920 to cart. The next thing is they went into 691 00:29:42,920 --> 00:29:44,560 the car and then left the cart again. 692 00:29:45,240 --> 00:29:48,000 Did we not give them enough information instantly when they 693 00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:50,160 clicked add the cart, You know, did the cart not pop out to tell 694 00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:52,040 them it was there? If the cart pops out and 695 00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:54,800 everybody within half a second shuts the cart when it pops out, 696 00:29:54,800 --> 00:29:57,160 maybe just have a little thing that pops up saying add it to 697 00:29:57,160 --> 00:29:59,560 cart, but don't have it pop out and require a close. 698 00:29:59,560 --> 00:30:02,680 There's all these little things you can do, which again, from an 699 00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:04,760 SEO point of view, we're looking at where people are clicking on 700 00:30:04,760 --> 00:30:08,200 buying guides or you probably, and this is one of the things 701 00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:10,680 massively to look at from an SEO point of view, you've probably 702 00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:13,200 got links all over your sites. You're buying guides, blog posts 703 00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:17,320 and other stuff, and if no one clicks them, from an SEO point 704 00:30:17,320 --> 00:30:18,480 of view, they're not very useful. 705 00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:19,680 If anything, they're dead content. 706 00:30:19,680 --> 00:30:21,880 And Google actually hates that because you're just creating 707 00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:24,040 content to try and please Google, but Google wants you to 708 00:30:24,040 --> 00:30:26,520 please your customers first. So from an SEO point of view, 709 00:30:26,520 --> 00:30:28,240 you see all these links going off to this content that no 710 00:30:28,240 --> 00:30:30,880 one's reading and you think, OK, there's a lot of dead content on 711 00:30:30,880 --> 00:30:32,560 our site actually, and people aren't going to it. 712 00:30:33,040 --> 00:30:37,160 So run an AB test and take off that button and remove it to say 713 00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:39,120 we're not going to have buying guides linked to from our 714 00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:41,920 collections, for example. And if you find conversion rate 715 00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:45,960 drops, I wouldn't be surprised. Sometimes just knowing that this 716 00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:49,240 company has a buying guide probably increases my confidence 717 00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:50,720 that this is a good place to buy from. 718 00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:53,280 I feel like I'm informed even if I just glance at the buying 719 00:30:53,280 --> 00:30:55,560 guide or just see that that it exists, even if I don't click 720 00:30:55,560 --> 00:30:57,160 through to it. So you might financially 721 00:30:57,160 --> 00:30:59,040 conversion rates higher when you have a link to buying guide, 722 00:30:59,040 --> 00:31:01,360 even if no one ever looks at it. So you might just want to leave 723 00:31:01,360 --> 00:31:02,960 it there anyway. And that's where you're looking 724 00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:05,040 at from an SEO point of view and you're going to take it out. 725 00:31:05,360 --> 00:31:08,000 But from acro point of view, you're going to lose revenue, 726 00:31:08,000 --> 00:31:10,360 you're going to lose transactions and and revenue 727 00:31:10,360 --> 00:31:12,560 from that. And if you saw revenue start to 728 00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:15,320 drop, that is not something you would remember that you had 729 00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:18,480 changed or pinpoint that like OK, that dropped our revenue by 730 00:31:18,480 --> 00:31:21,000 5 or 10%. So this is all about knowing 731 00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:23,360 your customer, what do they need to know before they will buy 732 00:31:23,360 --> 00:31:25,560 from you. And those internal links are 733 00:31:25,560 --> 00:31:27,680 super, super important to that. So you're giving all the right 734 00:31:27,680 --> 00:31:30,480 information over to them. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed 735 00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:32,000 today's episode. That's all from me. 736 00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:33,840 If you want to get in touch with us, we'd love to talk to some of 737 00:31:33,840 --> 00:31:35,240 you guys. We work with all kinds of brands 738 00:31:35,240 --> 00:31:37,080 all over the world. And if not, if you do want to 739 00:31:37,080 --> 00:31:39,560 sit there and listen to podcast for the next 10 years, that also 740 00:31:39,560 --> 00:31:42,120 is absolutely OK. And there's a middle ground, 741 00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:44,720 which is what I call freemium. It's free to do, but requires 742 00:31:44,720 --> 00:31:46,520 you to fill out a small form. You can come and join our 743 00:31:46,520 --> 00:31:48,000 community as well. I hope you enjoyed today's 744 00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:49,320 episode. I'll have a guest from me again 745 00:31:49,320 --> 00:31:50,760 next week and it's gonna be absolutely amazing. 746 00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:52,720 So I hope you can TuneIn then we post every Friday and you 747 00:31:52,720 --> 00:31:54,200 haven't already hit that subscribe button. 748 00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:54,800 Thanks a lot.