u/faimusdude

Now what do I mean by that?

The biggest difference between an online store and a physical location is tangibility.

All 5 of your customer's senses help play a huge role in handling their objections at physical locations.

Now when it comes to an online store, you only have the sense of sight vouching for you.

Nothing else.

Your customer is more or less impaired.

So how do you enable the sense of sight to trigger the remaining 4 senses.

Imagination!

Let me give you an example.

Let's say you run a fragrance brand.

You can have the fanciest Eau de toilette with a scent mixed with flowers from the Amazon Rainforest, ebony from Cameroon and alcohol from Heaven.

Now at a physical location, the customer's going to enter your store, instantly get hallucinated by the aroma and sillage in the atmosphere and when they spray your EDT on the tester strip to smell, they're all yours.

Let's go to an online store now. The customer enters and sees a massive picture of "Forbidden Canopy EDT" and a sliding announcement bar saying "Free Shipping over $120" "High Quality Fragrances" "Return Window 60 Days".

Instead of a pleasant scent, they're blasted with your offer.

The only sense (sight) in your favor is also failing you.

So how do you appeal to it?

You add visuals of the origins of the scent mixture, describe the fragrance notes in detail, use analogies to describe ineffable words to close sensory deficits, have real humans mention what the scent smells like, etc.

There are so many levers you can pull as long as you can point out the gaps between the online and physical store versions for your brand.

This is a new perspective I came up with so I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.

You sell athletic clothing.

Buyers see your ad for your storewide anniversary sale.

They go to your store.

They see best sellers, new arrivals, compression shirts sale, shorts sale, sports bras sale, shoes sale, etc.

Too many choices.

They just saw a sale and decided to show up.

Now they're presented with this obstacle course of going through every category to figure out what they want.

What if you made everything simple for them and let them shop by "use" too.

For example, when they enter your store, instead of presenting best sellers, new arrivals.... first, what if you started with

"Workout Sessions"
"Cardio Wear"
"Relaxed Homewear"

And my reasoning's straightforward.

People buy products to fulfill desires.

And if they feel like your product resonates with their desire, they will buy 9.9 times out of 10.

So help verbalize the desire for them and do it fast.

This is a new perspective I came up with so I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.

You sell athletic clothing.

Buyers see your ad for your storewide anniversary sale.

They go to your store.

They see best sellers, new arrivals, compression shirts sale, shorts sale, sports bras sale, shoes sale, etc.

Too many choices.

They just saw a sale and decided to show up.

Now they're presented with this obstacle course of going through every category to figure out what they want.

What if you made everything simple for them and let them shop by "use" too.

For example, when they enter your store, instead of presenting best sellers, new arrivals.... first, what if you started with

"Workout Sessions"
"Cardio Wear"
"Relaxed Homewear"

And my reasoning's straightforward.

People buy products to fulfill desires.

And if they feel like your product resonates with their desire, they will buy 9.9 times out of 10.

So help verbalize the desire for them and do it fast.

Oftentimes, when buyers are purchasing supplements, you upsell them into buying the subscription rather than a single unit.

Win win situation.

They get more at a cheaper per unit price.

You have one less customer to spend money on acquiring.

But here's the issue.

If you don't make them realize how much they're saving, don't expect them to become a subscriber.

Let me put this into perspective for you.

The buyer is 1-2 rightwards swipe away from backing out of your website and falling into the endless sea of competitor supplements.

Due to this zero latency mechanism for buyers, you have to make sure that everything is quite literally handed to them in a plate.

The moment they have to think hard, your chances of losing them go through the roof.

If they see

"One time purchase = $24

Subscribe & Save = $24 (discount calculated at checkout)".

Even though the discount does apply at checkout, showing the same price for both options makes it look like there's no discount at all, which reads as a bait-and-switch.

If your buyer doesn't overthink like I just did above, then you're just making them take an additional step by forcing them to go to the checkout page to find the discount.

It may get further diluted once taxes and shipping are added to the subtotal.

Instead, just have a sticker saying "Saving X%" or "Saving $X".

Savings, if framed right, can go a long way.

Let's say you're a DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) Brand for hobbyists and specialize in selling chess boards.

When you're DTC, the biggest roadblock you face is the absence of tangibility.

Your buyers are unable to visualize how the chess board will look on their table and what size the pieces are.

So obviously, just like most chess brands, you throw up the dimensions of the boards.

But do you think that's enough?

Why not give more?

Think of it.

When you provide the dimensions, you're assuming the buyer has a measuring tool on them or has the willingness to over exert their hippocampus (part of brain that stores spatial memory) just to buy your $30 chess board.

Why not also have a photo of the chess board in play, being used by people.

Because now the buyer doesn't just see how the board and pieces look on the table, they can gauge the actual scale through the people using it in the photo.

Give and give more. You will get and get more.

Every CPG Brand project I have completed always ends up hitting same nail.

The misconception of complex wording with trust.

We often associate people who use complicated words with intelligence and trust.

But wait.

Let's be honest with ourselves now.

Imagine if someone came up to you on a fine Sunday morning and said:

"Today we’re going to talk about the crossover and intersection between environmentalism, social justice, and education. In combination with raising awareness, leveraging your platform and influence and investing in a sustainable future."

If this wasn't displayed in text, would you truly want to continue listening to this buzzword of a human?

If yes, here's a medal🥇.

But for the rest of us, the last thing we want to spend our braincells on is trying to "decipher" and "elucidate" every single word they say.

Now imagine if your customers read:

"Centella Asiatica"

"diglycerides"

"conjugated linoleic acid"

And not:

"accelerates skin barrier repair"

"reduce body fat accumulation"

"helps reduce fatigue".

If you plainly put those substances' names without pairing them with their benefits, your customers feel exactly how you felt after reading that excerpt above.

English is a vast language. Use it to communicate clearly.

DTC Brands, when running sales, usually provide a discount code rather than slashing current prices by the set discount.

Now they have a choice.

Either have the visitors manually apply the discount code at checkout

or

Automatically apply the code for the visitors.

Theoretically, the latter's the better choice.

Visitors don't have to memorize the code, go back to copy the code, take a screenshot of the code, etc.

This prevents numerous biases from interrupting the visitor's sales journey.

However, there are some instances where reality rejects theory.

I was auditing a Model Trains brand and noticed they don't have automatic discount application.

I put forward this "error" with the same reasoning I have given above.

Their founder said

"I don't think I agree with the automatic discount code population. We have many people buy things for full price when we have sales".

Think of this.

You run a sale with a discount offer.

You get more visitors than baseline because of the discount offer (lower CAC).

The visitors buy at full price instead (greater margins).

There's one caveat though.

If you have price elastic prospects, this may not work for you.

But,

if you have an influential brand, sell necessities, a product with no close substitutes and/or habit-forming products,

feel free to take advantage of this strategy.

I was working with a CPG DTC Brand on a one-off project, trying to diagnose their insanely high CAC.

Felt like I kept on hitting a dead end with their landing page because it was perfectly optimized.

Subscription upsell's value properly communicated.

PR scaled to the moon.

Loaaadsss of UGC placed as testimonials.

Ingredients aren't bits of the periodic table.

Directions are easily digestible.

Us vs. Them chart uniquely bashed their main competitor (tip: go to your direct competitor's trust pilot and use the 1-3 stars as content for the "them" section of the chart).

Everything's laid out.

At this point why even partner up with an external CRO Agency?

Can you not just find a better creative director?

Kept on asking myself that on the client's behalf.

Now one of the parts of my diagnosis requires me to do a quick skim of the brand's ad libraries.

And guess what?

Everything made sense after I came across this one thing.

Message mismatch.

Every ad of theirs was redirecting visitors to their new product line.

Regional energy drinks (this was during the World Cup).

However, the copy and visuals in the ad showed their hero product.

A vanilla + strawberry protein powder.

Believe it or not, you can pass through all three series of venture funding, and still make this fundamental mistake.

Why is this a mistake?

Imagine being told you're having steak tonight.

Your taste buds are working overtime for you to conceive how the steak will taste.

But no.

Turns out the menu changed and now you'll have sardines.

I'll leave that feeling to your imagination now.

And that's exactly how a visitor feels when "tricked" by an ad.

The last thing they want to do is manually navigate to what they were shown in the ad.

So what do they do?

They leave your funnel forever.

Hey {{firstName}},

Saw {{companyName}} is scaling paid ads.

I took a look at your site and found 5 things that could be costing you conversions from traffic you’re already paying for and put them in a short checklist.

I do CRO for DTC brands and recently helped {{cantmentionnameonreddit}} generate an additional $111,000/year in revenue from a 3-week test.

Let me know and I'll shoot the checklist over to you?

Best,

Hey {{firstName}},

I saw you were scaling your advertisements for {{companyName}}.

Would you like a free checklist of 5 conversion bottlenecks I found on your website? Each one is a specific issue you can fix right away and convert the new traffic you get from your scaled ads. 

Homepage navigation, collection page issues, product page and checkout frictions, that kind of thing.

For context: I recently ran the same process for a DTC brand, {{cantmentionnamehere}}, and helped them bump their conversion rate by 7%  from changes shipped in a 3-week test.

Let me know and I'll shoot it over to you.

Best,

{{RANDOM | Hey {{firstName}} | Hi {{firstName}} | Hello {{firstName}}}},

If I send over a free 5 personalized high leverage website fixes checklist for {{companyName}}, would that help you?

The fixes will all be bottlenecks that once solved, will help increase your website's conversion rate and lower customer acquisition costs for you. {{RANDOM | All you have to do is say "YES". | Just reply to this email with a "YES". | Just say "YES" and I'll send it over.}}

No strings. All free. 

And just so you know you're in good hands, I recently helped a DTC brand, {{cantmentionthenameonreddit}}, add $111,000/year in revenue within 2 weeks of experimentation with zero additional marketing spend.

Happy to also send over the short case I made for them. It has tweaks and fixes you can use with the checklist too!

Best,

Faizan