How a Step-by-Step CRO Approach Helped Baby Tula Drive 16% More Revenue

a, one of our premium agencies, Digital Operative. The main subject of today’s session is primarily about how interestingly Digital Operative, which is a premium Shopify and Magento agency, actually works on a step-by-step approach. This approach helped Baby Tula drive almost a good 16% more revenue and conversion. So it’s a very structured method. One of the conversion optimization experts from Digital Operative, Nick, is going to lead us through. And we also have Courtney Winters joining in. She heads up success and she’s a digital producer at Baby Tula. She has been closely collaborating with Nick, who’s an optimization architect and consultant for Digital Operative, to work on the success story and the structured approach.

Nick and Courtney, I’ll probably pass the ball to you. Start off with Courtney Winters to give a quick round of introduction about you and talk a bit about Baby Tula and then move to Nick maybe. Sure. Please go ahead.

 

Courtney Winters:

So I’ve been with Baby Tula for about 5 years now, and I kind of worked my way through a few departments recently. I started out in customer service just as a hook and made my way to customer service manager and then split my time between events and customer service. So, I guess this kind of goes to show, at Baby Tula, we’ve often, a lot of our employees that go through similar trajectories where we need different departments and just kind of who is a small but nimble team. And then most recently, I worked in the digital and I am our digital marketing producer or manager. Baby Tula is a premier carrier company.

We make baby carriers, and something kind of we’re known for is very simple, easy-to-use intuitive designs, that kind of have a little flair. So something for everyone. We make our luxury carrier collection. Our signature line has our higher end, higher price carrier collection that is made with the material. And then, yeah, we’ve been around for about 10 years And yeah, that’s it.

 

Ryan:

Alright. That’s a great introduction, Courtney. Thank you so much. Nick over to you, the ball is in your court now. Please go ahead.

 

Nicholas Powell:

Definitely. Thanks, Ryan, and thanks, Courtney. So, I’ve been doing web optimization for about 10 years now, both in-house and agency-side. It’s allowed me to design and conduct over 1000 online experiments, which is awesome.

I really specialize in storytelling analytics, testing, and optimization. When I was a kid, I loved reading those ‘choose your own adventure’ books. The cool thing is, I sort of use that concept today. Our goal is to use analytics and testing to present online visitors with their own ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ stories, designed to ensure every ending is a happy one, rather than walking off a cliff when they turn the page. We call the optimal path for these adventures the ‘Happy Path’ here at Digital Operative. So, that’s what I do.

A little bit about Digital Operative: we’re a full-service digital commerce agency, specializing in growth, customer experience, and marketplace strategies. Founded in 2008, we have an excellent reputation with Magento and Shopify development. Our hybrid team is made up of in-house senior-level digital and eCommerce experts. We help clients like Baby Tula as well.

 

Ryan:

Awesome, awesome. That’s great. Thanks once again, Nick and Courtney. Thank you so much for squeezing out time and giving us a blurb about what you guys do and the organization on a broader scale.

Now, I’m gonna quickly jump in. This first question goes to you, Courtney. When you approached Digital Operative, what were the challenges you were facing? What was the backstory behind it? Can you tell us a bit about how you managed to reach out to Digital Operative and how things started off?

 

Courtney:

Sure. So, with the ever-evolving mobile-first trend, we had trouble translating the right products for the right person when they visited our website. This is still something we’re working on today. We were doing things that we thought looked good on the website, but we needed to test and figure out what our consumers were reacting to and how we could provide them with the information they actually need to make a conversion.

 

Ryan:

Alright. When you reached out to Nick from Digital Operative, I’m sure you guys were doing experimentation. How would you define Baby Tula’s CRO maturity level at that time when you reached out to Nick to help you out?

 

Courtney:

Honestly, it was very low. We tried a few different things, but we didn’t have clear metrics or tracking processes in place to have statistically significant results.So, it’s pretty bare minimum.

 

Ryan:

Alright. So that’s the experimentation part.  Do you remember any attempts you made to improve your conversions and your customer experience before you reached out to Baby Tula? What did you guys do to improve your conversions and your customer experience?

 

Courtney:

There was a lot of personal research. Again, we had a small team, so we would research by going through competitors that we personally had positive experiences with. But our product is different, so finding what works for us wasn’t straightforward.

 

Ryan:

Okay. Generally, what I’ve seen is a lot of organizations, primarily in the SMB segment, generally prefer to have an in-house experimentation team or a CRO team. Did you already have that CRO team or another experimentation team, or did you reach out? What were the thoughts and the guiding principles for Baby Tula before you decided, “Let’s bring in an expert, let’s bring in D.O. to help us out”? Or did you think “Maybe we can build an in-house experimentation team”?

 

Courtney:

You know, we were just so lean. While we tried to implement part of a CRO process, we knew that we didn’t have the experience or the personnel to make the biggest change. It would have taken us considerable time and effort, not being experts, to get anywhere even in the air about digital optimization.

 

Ryan:

Right. So it was primarily due to combat on the time and effort issue, if I rephrase your statement, that’s one of the guiding principles and guiding metrics for you to probably begin as an expert, like, Nick from Digital Operative, to help you guys out. Right?

 

Courtney:

Yeah.

 

Ryan:

Thanks a lot. That was quite an interesting question. So thanks a lot for helping us out. Nick, the next one gets bounced off to you. What were your thoughts when you had a chat with Courtney from Baby Tula? How was Baby Tula working at that time and what was the magic wand for you that you probably pushed in and got this opportunity to closely work with Courtney?

 

Nick:

Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that we do during, I guess, the prospect phase is to do a scorecard, right? And so we first started speaking with Baby Tula. You know, they wanted to sort of understand a little bit more about what metrics were important, how their site stacked up to the competition, as well as, you know, some recommendations in terms of what we would do if they partnered with us.

And so we put together work hard for them, which is, you know, just like a base audit of performance. What things that we would look at in terms of testing out if we could even test on pages, right? And then what that would even look like. And so that’s sort of the outside of it.

And ability to get a little more granular in that. You know, one of the things during that process that stood out the most to us was that Baby Tula has over 80% mobile audience. 

 

Ryan:

Okay, That’s an incredible number. 

 

Nick: 

Yeah, that’s a huge number. That’s something, you know, we’re seeing even more frequently these days with a lot of clients. But in terms of Baby Tula, one thing we really wanted to do is sort of shift that paradigm from looking at desktop wires to looking at pages in the desktop format and sort of flip it to where we’re paying priority to the mobile experience. So, that was one big thing, I think, during our conversation that really stood out to them. We not only presented the case for a mobile-first philosophy, but we also presented, you know, if you’re able to increase your mobile conversion rate or really impact your mobile conversion rate, that’s gonna lead to a chunk of the pie in terms of overall revenue. Essentially, that was the communication articulation of the process. And that’s exactly what we were able to do.

 

Ryan:

Right. Awesome. Awesome. In fact, I was actually going to the article of yours, which you wrote, and I found pretty amazing the numbers which I saw there. Did you guys manage to achieve a staggering 16% plus revenue for Baby Tula?

And the interesting part, which I noticed, was the implementation of the step-by-step structure to your approach. You managed to have a good 68% revenue-per-visitor and a good 10 percent hike in your average order value for Baby Tula. That’s definitely an interesting number. Plus, to top that up, I also saw that you guys had a good 31 percent increase in the conversion rate. So essentially, all of these boil down to the structured approach which you do, and you want to devote a lot of these achievements to the way you guys see CRO and the way you guys have implemented experimentation. Right?

 

Nick:

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, the top conversation around that structured page is about coordinating the team’s goals, where they need to be like 6 months or a year from now. We use those goals as the foundation to set up our approach.

Obviously, customers and their wants and needs are extremely important in this conversation as well. Referring back to that ‘choose your own adventure’ mentality, it’s about combining the business goals with customer goals to really influence that structured approach. That’s where the outset of it is. We have a couple of slides to show how that structured approach looks, but more importantly, one thing we wanted to set out at the very beginning was a conversation around revenue per visitor, rather than just a broad conversion rate or average order value.

It’s a much better metric for evaluating overall site performance as it combines both of those things. So, what we were able to do really, when we look at a lot of the success and the goals we were aiming for, was a 30% increase in that revenue-per-visitor metric, which was super impactful over the course of partnership.

 

Ryan:

Right, okay. I actually saw your presentation where you laid down the structured approach. I would love to see that. I mean, why don’t we present that? Can we have the slides up?

Yeah, alright. Here comes the slide. Nick, I think you should just run us through.

That’s a pretty interesting color you’ve used. Yeah, please go ahead.

 

Nick:

It’s a barrel. It’s actually a barrel. Our design director at Digital Operative. That’s, I think, his favorite color. It’s nice. Yeah.

 

Ryan:

Yeah, I love the color, though. Yeah.

 

Nick:

But it’s pleasant. This is really about, you know, like, what I was saying, more about the Happy Paths, right? It’s optimizing little moments across an experience to help each customer, each visitor to the site, achieve their Happy Path. So whether it’s, you know, matching mode and understanding what somebody is looking for in a baby carrier and that, you know, like Courtney was saying, the challenge of directing them to the right carrier for them has been an ongoing opportunity especially with new users onto the site. So that’s what we’re trying to accomplish here. So if you wanna go to the next slide, it expands a little bit more about what these Happy Paths are. And it’s just really the optimal customer experience. Do you wanna go to the next slide, Ryan?

 

Ryan:

Yeah, sure. Thanks. Just give a second.

 

Nick:

There it is. Yeah. Let’s move to the next slide. Yeah. So, if you visualize, you know, with an ecommerce path, right, and you have a couple here. And it may be small to see right now, but, what’s inside of that is a lot of different decision points. Right? So whether they’re landing on the site, where they’re coming from, what channel they’re coming from, where they’re landing on the site, and how that matches their motivation to move throughout their journey. And each time they click a button, for example, or click on a link, It’s actually them saying yes and wanting to move down this funnel, to learn more.

Right. And so once you add up all these decision points, to the end, you get your primary decision, which is to purchase. So along the way, what we’re doing is we’re utilizing these motivational matching techniques to ultimately lead them into the position to have enough information, enough value to buy. So that’s what Happy Paths are all about. In their field, if you wanna go to the next slide running, they’re really along the ideology of the conversion, a characteristic that people have seen, first developed at the MECLABS Institute in Florida.

But, do you wanna go to the next slide, Ryan?

 

Ryan:

Yeah, sure.

 

Nick:

So we do utilize these elements in terms of how we view human behavior, really, what people are motivated by.

Why are they on the site in the first place? What prompted them to be there? And what are they looking for? You know, the pieces of value that help, you know, tip the scale, whether they’re going to buy or not buy, you know, what products, product features, and benefits really resonate. Friction, things that are hard and difficult throughout the website that we wanna minimize to get them over those barriers to purchase, any incentives or coupons and then, of course, anxiety around, you know, that buy decision or, you know, potentially making a mistake or giving your credit card number, etcetera.

If you wanna go to the next slide, it really starts speaking about the research process that we put in in the first 30 days of our engagement. And that’s really taking into account all points of data that we possibly can to develop what we call, and I’ll show on the next slide is the optimization and testing framework, and that’s really the meat and potatoes of the structure. And what this is, again, we are attempting to mimic these Happy Paths, but then also we wanna bring in essentially the scientific method in a sort of the way that we go about this approach. And what this is is utilizing these overarching hypotheses. You can see on the right side of the screen, ask solutions to challenges that we’ve identified through the metrics.

Right? So our data analysis, personal analysis, things like that. And so once we have that information, we can say, here’s the overarching things that we see. Back to the Baby Tula example, one of those would be mobile. Right?

Mobile was an issue. People falling off from the mobile experience, specifically due to the friction along the process. So you know, long copy, long blocks of copy. So a lot of length, friction, and spacing. There were things on mobile when we first started where, you know, it was, essentially, we did this awesome on desktop, but then it just sort of went to mobile and we, as a second secondary thought, and so what we’re doing is we’re diving into these overarching hypotheses.

Well, if we influence mobile, if we lift that mobile conversion rate by percent or revenue per visitor by x percent, then we’re gonna realize these results in terms of our client’s goals, and Courtney’s goals. And so what we’ll do is we’ll run through that process And for each one of those overarching hypotheses, there’s many test hypotheses involved in it. And so when we run through the framework, we’re actually moving in that overarching direction, for increased performance. Although it’s built upon these iterative tests and optimizations over a period of time. And the results we can see in terms of the numbers for Baby Tula, but that is, you know, how the structured process works. Over time, it’s really setting out those overarching hypotheses.

And then designing solutions that are impactful to those as opposed to, you know, I think one of the things that is overwhelming about optimization is should I view it at a page level? Should I view it at a funnel level? Should I view it as a holistic website level at the beginning? And I think it’s difficult for a lot of internal departments to say, we’re gonna impact all this stuff, but how do we start? Where do we start?

And the structured approach helps to break it up into sort of bite-sized pieces or overarching hypotheses to help move down a structured path to optimization.

 

Ryan:

That’s a great presentation, Nick. Thank you so much for running us through. It essentially culminates down and breaks down everything that you guys have done on the CRO part and the structured approach which you have taken. Now I’m gonna take some cue points from there. And my next question to you would be, you know, while you are using this structured approach, would you be able to share some metrics, like the baseline conversions, any guardrail metrics that you were moving forward with in the case of Baby Tula?

 

Nick:

Yeah, absolutely. So, when we set out to test, there were challenges in terms of being able to test on specific pages due to sample size traffic, as well as conversion rate from specific pages. In terms of metrics, you’re obviously looking for around 5000 a week, right, to really get a sample size to where you can run tests in an adequate amount of time.

Along with conversion rates from pages between anywhere from 3 to, you know, when you’re testing navigation obviously, it’s a lot higher. But you wanna be able to reach statistical significance on tests that you’re running. But then on the other part of that, there were, at the onset of this engagement, there were specific go-do optimizations as we like to call them. Which in the testing world sometimes people frown on.

However, when you don’t have enough traffic on specific pages, and you know there’s just like a book of copy somewhere. Hey, let’s go ahead and clean up some of these things. And the cool thing about that is we were able to see the conversion rates lift from that, along with some click-through rate increases. So we ended up getting enough traffic on pages like product pages, collection pages from those go-do optimizations give us enough traffic to be able to test later.

And so, you know, when we’re looking at moving down the users from pages that are not getting a high enough click-through rate, and then we’re enabling that. The cart is a great example. You know, when we first set out, the add-to-cart rate across the site was probably around 2% or less. When we sort of dive into the analytics, we’re seeing that only the highest-motivated users are actually clicking through. So what do we need to do? We need to influence medium to lower level users, that way they’re actually adding products to the cart and then moving through it. So once we were able to get enough users into the cart, then we could adequately test the cart experience.

 

Ryan:

Okay. So, you know, while you were, you know, based on the experiment’s outcome, were there any reservations or challenges, rather, I would probably rephrase that. Was there any challenge which you probably faced or which you experienced from Baby Tula to your team asking that, you know what? Whatever or whatsoever, maybe the outcome of the experiments, there are a few aesthetics on the site which can’t be altered. So were there any guidelines for you that you can’t change this even though the experiment is telling you something else?

 

Nick:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ll ask Courtney too to expand on this. However, you know, maybe because she said a little bit about it at the beginning, but their products sort of move in and out. They have a lot of new releases. It’s quite different from some of our other clients in terms of the product mix, as well as the movement of different products in and out. And then there’s this signature category, and they have these huge releases. So, you know, we’ll have to take that into account while we’re testing, especially when we’re looking at revenue, because you’ll have, like, what, $800, $900 carriers, and that’ll skew your results significantly. And so those have to be factored in. Courtney, do you wanna sort of expand a little bit on the challenge with your product, you know, how they kind of move in and out? Because I think it’s interesting.

 

Courtney:

So, you know, it is really that we have specific items that are pretty much always in stock. But then we do have releases pretty much weekly. And depending on the product, it can sell out in minutes or days. And so that presents just a really tricky product problem for us and, when optimizing the website specifically. And then our signature line is just branded differently. And I think that presents, like, a different set of, not problems, but it’s just another layer of intricacy of our brand. You know, when explaining, I always have to say a blank statement about the company, but there’s always a few “buts” to back it up, you know? It’s just it really is just such an interesting, passionate community that we serve. And then I think we do just have a very unique business model.

 

Nick:

Yeah, thanks, Courtney. And too, Ryan, like, that’s another one. That’s another thing that she just brought up to you about the customer group or the segments involved in testing with Baby Tula. You know, they have this fan group, right, of ultra-loyalists. And when we’re looking and it’s good.

In VWO, we’re able to segment a lot of these out in terms of returning users and new users and, you know, just a lot of different favorable segments to kind of look at the data. However, there are these loyalists, and they will drive higher, obviously higher conversion rates, especially during these release periods. And we’ve actually utilized this to our advantage in cases with landing pages and places we know we’ve seen a lot of impact from the loyal group. And then there’s another whole area of the structured approach that’s really catered towards new users because it’s such an important part of keeping the business moving in the right direction and growing.

However, the ultra-loyalists, you know, getting them to come back and keep purchasing and sending them offers and things like that, and the marketing team’s doing a really good job of working on that with retargeting. But then the new users, you know, how do we significantly impact lifetime value, through what they’re seeing on the site, not only on their first visit, but then subsequent visits, and it’s all about product education and value. And we’ve done a lot of testing around how we can present a Baby Tula brand value for new users as well as these loyalists, to continue that loyalty over time. And there’s little things, like, we were able to test, on collection pages and on product pages utilizing real estate that’s typically not used for value. And we’re able to, for example, on the collection page, we tested utilizing one of the product pads as a value statement.

And we tested that, more of a generic test which proved to, you know, reach significance in terms of not only click-through rate but then ultimately, add-to-carts and conversion rate throughout the process. And then we tested that against itself, utilizing social, so adding in a review there versus an image and that also worked out, to show that regardless of either one, it’s still presenting the same value. So necessarily, you know, we’ll move back and iterate that and see if we can find something else to move the needle a bit more, but then we also tested that same sort of value on product pages utilizing a pop-up that just, you know, had a statement of value versus a social, sort of like a user-generated review. And so those are some of the things that we’re testing in terms of value to help resonate with not only that new user segment but also with the loyal event who keeps coming back for Tula products

 

Ryan:

Yeah, I mean, that’s great. In fact, Nick, in fact, I was just going through the presentation and hearing you talk about it. The conversions, you know, the incremental approach which you guys have at, this is a perfect strategy, and I love the strategy. It’s a perfect one for a lot of e-commerce managers who are seeking growth while operating on a cost-conscious marketing budget.

Plus, at the same time, I’m pretty thrilled to hear that you guys interestingly took on tapping into a large mobile audience, which I believe is upwards of 30% plus, and using that audience. If you have implemented this strategy, I think this is a must-on strategy for a lot of eCommerce managers. Since you spoke about a lot of testing, which you did on specific pages, Nick, my next question to you is gonna be along similar lines. What was the time when you were doing this experimentation? Were there any upcoming holiday seasons?

And if yes, did you probably experience any kind of spike in the numbers during the course of this experimentation?

 

Nick:

Well, yeah, of course. I mean, seasonality is something that, you know, obviously during the holiday season, it’s go time, right? And one of the things that we did in terms of the structured approach, so I’ll sort of back up, and then I’ll answer your question because it is relevant to the conversation. But, you know, we set out, we started this engagement in, I think, it was July of last year. And when we set out with the engagement, you know, we quickly identified through the sort of the, like, our data analysis and research and talking with Courtney and the team that we needed to front-load all of our efforts to get the website where it needs to be before we get that holiday spike.

So, interestingly enough, we were looking at that seasonality in terms of, “Hey, let’s try to get everything that we want before.” That way, the site is in a really good place to take advantage of the holiday traffic. And I think that’s one thing that a lot of businesses don’t necessarily think about. A lot of them will tell us, ‘You know, we’re gonna wait for next year, and then we’ll start doing some optimization.’ But I think that it’s not really ever too late, especially because, like, very specifically because of the seasonality. If you can take advantage of the increased traffic, increased levels of motivation during the holiday time period, it makes all the sense in the world, even if you’re just a month out to start.

That way you can get some good things in and take advantage of that now. In saying that, we did test throughout the holiday period last year. Our focus during the holidays was specifically around the holiday campaigns, and we have collected that data to use for this holiday coming up. So when we begin our preparations and planning for that, we’re gonna pull out all of our customer theory documentation data from the test we ran last year to help inform how we can impact that peak motivational time period for the following holiday season.

So, you know, and that’s sort of an important thing to think about when you’re testing throughout the holiday season. It’s difficult to apply some of those learnings to, you know, say February, March, April, right? Because you’re not seeing the same sort of seasonal spike in motivation, is really what it is. However, you can take those learnings and you can apply them back towards a Valentine’s Day campaign or Mother’s Day, which we actually did this year and had quite a successful Mother’s Day landing page and campaign for that. So, yeah, seasonality is definitely a thing.

However, we’re viewing it with our structured approach and using it to our advantage as opposed to letting it be a boon, you know, and having like a stop to our testing or anything like that. Let’s just take advantage of that motivational period. Do you have anything to add to that, Courtney, in terms of the holidays?

 

Courtney:

I mean, I think you have been instrumental. I’m thinking back at you giving us advice as to how long to run our holiday campaigns. You know, we had kind of stacked campaigns, and just thinking back… Yeah, we had a bunch of smaller promotions planned, and you were like, “But if you do longer, week-long”, you know, and it really made a huge difference in our effort behind the scenes in setting up those promotions. And yeah, it was just a huge help. So, we’re looking forward to this year too.

It’ll be nice to have some, you know, information and data to guide our decisions too. I think that’s just been huge for us in general. Making data-driven decisions is just superior, and now we have that tool.

 

Ryan:

Cool. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Great.

Great. Thanks a lot, Courtney and Nick for jumping in and giving me much needed clarity. Nick, you know, post the experimentation was done and during the course of this experimentation, on baby dealer side. I’m sure you were, of course, measuring the results. Were there any leading or lagging indicators which you probably can share, which probably changed the course of your experimentation, or you probably did something else.

And why do you think those indicators are lagging and what were the reasons for leading also?

 

Nick:

Yeah. So, when sort of going back to the conversation around product differentiation or, you know, which carrier is right for me, one thing that we were looking at in terms of an overarching hypothesis was that presenting different types of motivation would give us more indication of what people were looking for other than just like, ‘hey, I want this carrier’ or ‘this carrier’ or even if they knew what those carriers were. So we started doing some tests around maybe someone wants to choose style first, right? As opposed to maybe they’re more interested in the style piece of it, even more interested in how they wear the carrier, those types of things. And one test that sort of speaks to your question a little bit is we introduced ‘shop by style,’ and we noticed that users had a much higher conversion rate than the traditional or the control we were using, which was ‘shop by a specific carrier type.’

One thing we did notice over time, we were excited about the conversion rate. However, at the end of it, we did notice that the click-through rate of people moving through the ‘shop by print’ or ‘shop by style’ section lagged far behind what people were clicking into with the carriers. And even though it had this high conversion rate, we were like, ‘Yes. This is an awesome, awesome thing.’ One of those indicators is just like, you know, people are ready for it.

The people who are ready for it are like, “Yes. I’m ready to go with style,” but that was a clear indication that the majority of segments. And we can use this as we go through with personalization and maybe showing that content to specific groups. But that was a clear indicator that we were sort of putting the cart before the horse in terms of the motivation hierarchy of the process or the journey. And so what we did was we went back and said, “Alright, what are we gonna do with this conversion rate that we’ve achieved, although people aren’t really ready for it at this page in their journey?”

So, we’ve tested out these landing pages for each one of the carrier groups. And those ‘shop by print’ sections fit really nicely on those pages because once they have enough product education to make a decision on the type of carrier that they’re looking for, the next logical choice is to sort of shop by print, and we’re seeing right now those same higher conversion rates. With that, although people are now ready for that conversation. So it’s a really good indicator, in terms of, you know, yeah, we’re winning with this, but people aren’t ready for it on a grander scale

 

Ryan:

Awesome! You know, I think those were really interesting answers from your end. I would probably end this conversation with one last question, which is open to both you, Nick and Courtney: How did you decide on an experimentation platform? And when did you decide there?

And, according to both of you, what were the deciding factors when you chose VWO as one of your experimentation platforms?

 

Nick:

Well, I think the biggest thing for us is the breadth of not only the research tools but the experimentation that we can do with VWO. I think that looking at some of the other options out there, there are pros and cons with each one, but I think everything that you get with VWO — and I have to mention the price point as well — that price point is just sort of the optimal solution for Baby Tula and for clients and companies that are right in that range. And I think that just you being able to not only test but then have, like, heatmaps, recordings, and surveys. We run the surveys on the site to really get a good idea of what customers want. We factor that into the data as we move through the structured approach, but you have all that stuff in one sort of spot.

The second piece to that is really around the support. And I talked to colleagues, you know, all over the country, that do what I do, and the general consensus from VWO is that the support network and the VWO support team are far superior to other platforms. And that’s like a general consensus. So it’s not just me, you know, telling Ryan how nice it is and trying to get kudos, but it is. I mean, you have any issue or anything that comes up.

And there, I mean, they’ve got to chat, they’ve got all these things, but they’re right there to help you. And in some cases, you know, I’ll be like, I’ve got 3 tests on building. And we typically utilize the editor for those, but, you know, I’m writing a lot of jQuery and things like that.

Don’t have time to fix this. So I’ll say, “Hey, guys. Can you help me?” And they’ll join me on the spot. So, you know, the support’s awesome.

And then the other piece of it is just being able to really have everything sort of in one place and the rapidity of just how quickly you got to come out with new features. I think the new features are a lot quicker than some of the other tools that I’ve used

 

Ryan:

Right. I think that’s the list of questions which I have for both you, Nick and Courtney. I think I do not have any more questions. It was a very constructive and invigorating discussion. Thank you so much for being a part of this.

We wanna open this up for everyone who’s there is an attendee to bounce off any questions to whosoever you have, please raise your hand or just drop your question in the question panel, and we’ll take it up. Please ask you a question to either of us, Nick, Courtney, and me, and we will take this up for you.

We’ll just wait for some questions for people to come in and bounce off. And, I think, what was this? I mean, we will send you across the recording of this webinar in case you wanna see it, and it should be getting uploaded on the VWO webinar section.

So, yeah, we can share a link also with all of you. But in the meantime, if you have any questions, which we can answer, please feel free to bounce off.

 

Nick:

Now, while we’re waiting for questions, I just like to sort of that. It’s exciting. I know on our side, Courtney, it’s really exciting to see the growth over the last year. Not just because it’s like a work thing, but I think it’s one of those things that all of the effort and time that you put into something, you know, I think everyone on this webinar can sort of feel the same way. But all the time and effort that you put into something and seeing results come through this way—it’s just sort of a testament to not only what we do, but also what Courtney, you and your team have been doing as well. We often talk about things like the HiPPO effect and things like that. And internally on your side, it’s just not the case. And it’s really nice to be working sort of side by side with you and the team and just have awesome feedback on tests and things like that for approvals. 

And I think one thing that often in CRO that gets not discussed a lot on these types of calls or even in prospect sort of situations is the working relationship and the fit between organizations and, and our, you know, the way our 2 organizations work together is exactly what you wanna do, sort of how anybody would wanna mimic that. 

So I think it’s not only just the structured approach and the work we’ve been doing and the VWO folks and the platform, but I think it’s also the internal communication and the implementation of those optimizations is also key.

 

Courtney:

Yeah, you’re often aligned with our vision and goals, which makes it really easy to work together. We’re not dictating what we think is important and fighting through that; it’s always just aligned. Or you’ve been one step ahead of us, presenting something we’ve already been thinking about internally. So that’s, yeah, I would recommend finding…

 

Ryan:

It’s been a really insightful conversation. And actually, I had a question for you, Courtney. And maybe, Nick, you can also jump in. So, from your observation, Courtney, what do you think?

Since it’s a product that parents, especially mothers, would buy, right? In your observation, have you seen most of these customers coming before they’ve given birth or after? Because I think that would maybe change the messaging and the story.

 

Courtney:

Yeah.

 

Ryan:

What’s your observation on that?

 

Courtney:

Our product is a little unique because we see a lot of repeat purchasers. So while you might think a baby carrier would be just a one-time purchase, it often isn’t for many of our customers. A majority of our customers are coming back and purchasing additional baby carriers. We also see that often our carrier can be the second purchase. So maybe a family has gone on to purchase a different carrier.

And then, once they begin their parenting journey, they hear about Baby Tula through parent recommendations. So it kind of depends. I think we have a fair share of people who are coming during pregnancy, doing their research, but also a lot of people hear about Baby Tula through word-of-mouth and personal recommendations. And so, we’ve built a very loyal consumer and fan base from that.

 

Ryan:

Nice. And then do you—because these are both, I would imagine, separate segments to target, right? So what optimization techniques, tactics, or strategy would you implement in such a situation or would you recommend to our audience?

 

Nick:

Yeah, it’s a matter of, you know, in VWO work, it is really good for this because it allows us to do segmentation and show different content to different groups. So, you know, once we’ve identified if returning users are sort of like that loyalist group, something resonates quite a bit, then we can go ahead and just show that to that group as opposed to showing it to, you know, everybody. And that’s sort of a move that we’re making closer to getting a personalized experience. 

There’s a focus on new users, which has been especially important. You know, last year, but more so, I think, this year as we’re really driving brand value to get new users to convert for the first time. And so, we’ve been able to influence that by adding, you know, by testing and then adding winning variations that speak to some of the motivation that new users have and then educational concepts that they’re looking to learn.

So through the collection page module as well as the product page module. And then we also tested a complete redesign of the product page, which actually increased new user add-to-carts more than it did for the loyalist group. So we’ve been focused on that. And then when we do, you know, we report that data out to the team. We like to segment those in terms of new users versus returning users and then identifying people that are using that have those motivations. And then what can we do to improve that?

 

Ryan:

Correct. And because, since you mentioned new users, I imagine there’ll be a line between new users and first-time buyers, right? People who are having their first baby, right?

So they are in search of these baby carriers, right? It’s very close to their heart and quite different. So, it’s something dear to them. They want all kinds of comfort for the kids.

And, of course, some new users might have, as Courtney mentioned, bought some other carrier maybe previously, but now they’ve heard about Baby Tula and all the comfort that it provides, right? So, I think I can imagine the messaging strategy and the optimization technique to capture their attention would be slightly different, maybe, but, of course, an important segmentation there.

 

Nick:

Yeah. It is. I mean, we took on using some of the surveys in VWO and really looked at what those motivations were. And we were able to segment that out based on, sort of, that loyal group versus the new, first-time people. And one thing we noticed was, interestingly enough, even in the loyalist group, there was still a bit of like, “Hey, I don’t really know what carrier is right for me.” Even though the data showed a difference, there was still a bit of that.

And so, even though these two groups are a lot different in terms of, like, purchase rate or conversion rate and revenue per visitor, there are still challenges that both groups are having on the site that we’re testing right now as we speak and optimize for. So, you know, while we’re focused on new users, there is a bit of crossover in certain areas. And so it’s not always segmenting them out as much as looking at the data when we run tests. We always look at the data for these different segments because there can be, you know, like Ryan was saying earlier, indicators that can point us in a direction where, you know, this particular test is, and I haven’t had this show up to where we’ve implemented something, or during a test period where it adversely affected a specific segment to the point of saying, “Hey, you know, this is a winning test, but I don’t know if it’s gonna work out, or we need to try something different.” I haven’t had that happen, specifically with Baby Tula.

However, you know, there have been during a test period, trends that develop but just never reach any sort of statistical significance. But we do keep an eye out for those things because those groups are so different in terms of motivation.

 

Ryan:

Perfect. Thanks for answering, Nick. Ryan, sorry. I see that William Cook has a question, and he wants to come on mic and ask his question directly. So, William, I’ll just unmute you for a minute to ask your question. And once you’re unmuted, you can go ahead and begin.

 

Ryan:

Alright, William. You’re unmuted. Please go ahead and shoot your question, William.

 

William:

Okay. Yeah. For my brand, where do I start in terms of building out a CRO program? Where’s the best place to start? 

 

Nick:

So I would recommend always starting with the data, right? But it depends on what your goals are. So I would always say the right thing, write it down on paper where you want to be 6 or 12 months from now. What are those KPIs? Not only can we talk about overarching concepts, but also what are the overarching KPIs? And then what are all the goals or metrics involved in those KPIs?

So if you’re like, ‘I wanna be at $4 revenue per visitor,’ right? What makes up revenue per visitor? Well, obviously, your conversion rate, your audience, your traffic levels, and then your average order value all play into that. And then you walk that back a little bit more and say, okay.

Well, what influences conversion rate? Well, conversion rates are influenced by a lot of different variables now – click-through rate through pages, bounce rate pages. So you sort of work back to these overarching KPIs, and then move it back. And that’ll give you an idea of what metrics you need to influence at a funnel level. So we talk about, like, the lower funnel, which would be something, you know, like the cart all the way to checkout. And then the upper funnel is really like your shopping pages.

And you have your homepage and landing pages. And so when you work those metrics back, from your overarching KPIs, it’ll give you a good idea of what you need to impact at the funnel level and then again at the page level. So you can work it out and say, ‘Alright, I need, you know, here’s my largest fallout rates across these different places I’ve identified. These are the things I need to impact the most.’ And then you can segment that out and say, is it motivation?

Are people, you know, bouncing and not seeing what they’re looking for? Are they seeing what they’re looking for, but they’re just not engaging with it? So that could be a valuable conversation. Is there a lot of friction throughout your website, lots of copy, especially when we go back to the mobile conversation? And mobile, in particular, needs to be skimmable. Just think about how many people are sitting at a doctor’s office, or at a coffee shop or whatever, and they’re interrupted, or they get a phone call or a text.

And so there has to be a sort of a skimmable way on mobile for people to be interrupted and then quickly come back to it or complete that purchase, or that journey before they even have an interruption. So again, to sort of answer your question, I would start with your metrics where you wanna be, and work it back, identify areas of opportunity to impact the metrics that influence those overarching KPIs and then structure your program. You can start small if you’ve never tested before or done any optimizations, sort of 0 work before. It’s okay to start small. And even if you don’t have enough traffic on specific pages, it’s, you know, it’s okay to make optimizations that are fueled by data.

And then when you get to a position where you have enough traffic, you have a conversion rate that lends to testing. That’s always the recommended approach.

 

Ryan:

Alright. We do have another question from Dan. Dan Shoes here. Dan, I’m really sorry. I just saw your note about the corruption there.

I did not realize it. It’s a question for Courtney. Does Courtney see CRO as a critical ongoing piece of Baby Tula’s eCom marketing mix?

 

Courtney:

Oh, absolutely. Yes. It’s been critical for us. I mean, the proof is in the data, and the revenue increase, the conversion rate increase, and lift. And I think that just having, you know, it’s an ever-changing market. We’re saying mobile-first now, but who knows what it’ll be in a year or 2 even. So having Digital Operative, allowing them to be the experts so we can focus on growing our brand and marketing our brand, is really important to us.

 

Ryan:

Alright. We have another question from Dan. Which is exactly how VWO used to accomplish the goals and tests that Nick is doing for Baby Tula? That’s a question for Nick.

 

Nick:

So what was that? Could you read that question again, Ryan?

 

Ryan:

Yeah. I’m sure I will. How exactly is VWO used to accomplish the goals and tests that Nick is doing for Baby Tula?

 

Nick:

Oh, wow. Yeah. It’s sort of like the players on the field. So if I was the quarterback and I was executing the play, VWO would be all the line, the receivers, the tight end, everything. So what you do is you set it into that structure to where… And then here’s another point that answers the question that I spoke to a minute ago, as sort of like a caveat to that.

In terms of the way you structure an optimization program, the tool that you’re using has to influence how you execute that program.

And so with VWO, you have all of the research tools. So I can go in and set up funnels, goals, and metrics. I can monitor using live recordings, heat maps, run surveys, form-fill tests. And then I can run A/B tests, multivariate, obviously personalization tactics. Then they, like I said, have new things coming out every day. But what that gives me, in terms of an overall strategy, is the ability to say, here’s where I want to be. Here’s our overarching hypothesis.

I’m gonna go ahead and factor all of the things that I have, you know, at my fingertips, really, in VWO to execute on that strategy. So whether it’s testing, whether it’s data and research, it integrates really nicely with Google Analytics so we can dive in a little bit more into certain aspects. And so much like, again, like a football team would be, I know what my players are, what their strengths are, what their capabilities are. You know, VWO lends me to run a nice play because I know what I have to work with across the platform. So it’s exponentially important.

 

Ryan:

Alright, we have another question coming from Rohit RBS. He’s asking, what’s the percentage split between the data approach and heuristic and psychological approach in finding a problem? I believe that’s a question for Nick.

 

Nick:

Yeah, it’s a really, really good question. It always starts with data. And when I showed that metric or the slide up earlier with the sort of wheel and it had the different pieces. It would be a detriment to just start with one and then only use one or only use two.

The data is specifically to identify, you know, what is now and what is historical. When I go on a website and do a sort of qualitative approach in terms of analysis, I’m putting myself in the shoes of a visitor on the website, and I can look at it from a sort of human behavior perspective. And the data supports my analysis. So in terms of time, the analytics piece is the largest. So I would say if I had to give it a time, it would be probably 50% analytics.

Then you will have, like, a 20 to 25% of the heuristic sort of qualitative research, and then the rest would be made up of different pieces, you know, whether it’s tested information, experience, stakeholder interviews, from Courtney, what you are seeing on the ground here. So that’s sort of where I would see the mix, although all of them are as important. I think it’s just sort of like time management where I would add percentages to those things because the data piece does… You have to dig through it to tell these stories. And when you go and look at a website and you say there’s a lot of friction on this page or this doesn’t match motivation, you gotta always go back to the data to verify what you’re seeing is actually the case. Because I’ll be the first one to say, or you can run a test with like 99% personal confidence, and then 99% bombs on you.

And you’re like, wow. That’s not what I thought. So it’s always good to sort of go back to the data, but that’s where I would put that.

 

Ryan:

Alright. We have another question from Rohit. How do you choose the right solution from a set of solutions?

 

Nick:

Yeah, that’s, again, it goes back to the data. So, when you run several variations in these tests, what we try to do is, again, we use that overarching approach. So we’ll say if we reduce friction on this particular page by x percent, it’ll mean this for the experience. And then the test within that particular hypothesis would say, you know, if I, you know, reduce copy in these areas by using this variation, this click-through rate is going to increase, or I’m gonna see an increase in add to carts or whatever it is from our product page.

And then you take obviously the variation; data will tell you which variation performs better and which variation performed least. And then the important part with that is, once you have that data, you have to go in and verify the different segments, like Ryan was saying before about, like, those indicators. The indicators are super important; that you don’t just take a winning test and then say, oh, this is awesome. Let’s go ahead and implement it without looking at all the different segments. You could potentially detrimentally impact a specific segment.

So social traffic or, you know, direct traffic or new users or something like that by sort of blanketing, and optimization that you don’t see is impacted by data. So that’s sort of the first part of that. The second part is important, and I’ll give you a good example right now. We’re testing these collection landing pages right now, and they’re sort of slated in terms of the framework to be across all the different carrier collections where we started out testing 2 of them. And we’re collecting data right now. We’re looking to see to reach significance on some of the metrics. And I’m not going to ask Courtney to supply a ton of content for the rest of the pages until I have the data coming for the first group.

We’re iteratively testing, and what this does is especially impactful to what your development resources are. If you’re, you know, CRO in general, I mean, one of the things we don’t talk about in terms of ROI from CRO is how much you save on development resources. If you’re consistently putting your finger up to the wind and saying, “Ah, that’s a good solution.” Let’s implement that. How do you know what works?

And you could be wasting a ton of development resources on optimizations that don’t work. And a lot of those indicators, like Ryan was saying, will tell you, even if you say, oh, my conversion rate increased, that’s definitely what I just did on this page, but you don’t really know for sure. And then there could be another metric that is negatively impacted by that. So, yeah, it’s extremely important to kind of look at all those different pieces of the pie.

 

Ryan:

Alright. Before we wrap up the questions, there’s one last question which we have from William. And if you have more questions, all of you can separately connect with Nick Courtney or the VWO team with me, and we will be glad to answer all your questions. But for the last one, I see one question coming from William. With mobile continuing to grow at a rapid rate, what are some best practices eCommerce brands need to reconsider in a redesign of its website? That’s an interesting question.

 

Nick:

Courtney, do you wanna go first from your perspective?

 

Courtney:

I mean, I think that from my perspective, one or a few of the things that we have found are having your cart easily accessible, easily push through, which may sound like a no-brainer, but ours was not in the beginning. I think site navigation, access to products, is really important and how visually you see those. And something that was honestly really scary for us was losing the clutter from our sites and losing that content. We had built that content for 10 years, and pulling it from our website was really scary.

How are consumers gonna know what our products do? We have so many different carriers, and so kind of pressing in the data, which proved to us that it wasn’t as important as we felt or thought it was. You know, and just like Nick said, having it easily scrollable. So just clearing the clutter was really important and proved to be very important for us.

 

Nick:

Yeah. To add to that, what we’re seeing now is mobile payment options are huge, having the right mobile payment options available so users can check out relatively quickly, as well as just being in a position where the top information that users need to get is readily accessible, and it’s hard. It is hard. It’s tough to, you know, from an internal perspective, it is hard to want to give every piece of information about a particular product and how to pick and choose what’s valuable and what’s not valuable to sort of cut out of it.

And that’s where the data comes in and the testing. Like, “Hey, let’s remove this and see what happens.” Are people having an effect? Right? And then also utilizing tooltips to be able to add additional data without having additional data.

Obviously, SEO is in play when you start removing pieces of content. And so you have to also factor SEO into the equation on pages. But, for the most part,  just think of short attention spans. And the one thing for everyone who’s wondering how you can get mobile-first, the best thing you can do right now is to go through your mobile experience as if you’re buying something on your website.

Which, unfortunately, a lot of eCommerce people don’t. They always look at the desktop and that’s sort of a trend. Right? It’s hard not to. It’s big and you can see things. It’s beautiful. But, yeah, move through your mobile experience and just sort of ask yourself the question continuously.

If I was interrupted right now, would I come back? Often that’ll give you a good idea or to look at, and then you’ll look at the data and see if your intuition proves correct.

 

Ryan:

Alright. I think that’s the end. That’s a wrap. Thank you so much, everyone, for joining in. Thank you so much, Nick and Courtney, for squeezing out time and being a part of this discussion.

It was extremely exhilarating for all of us. I think there are a lot of questions which we answered, and I’m sure there are a lot of questions which will be coming across to us. Once again, to everyone, please feel free to drop us a note, and we will take the questions separately. As of now, good night from my end. I am in.

Good afternoon & Good morning to all the other people, and thank you so much for being a part of this VWO webinar. Thank you once again.

 

Courtney:

Thank you. 

 

Nick: 

Thank you, everyone.