w/ Shaun Brandt, Oddit
What if you could boost your Shopify sales without relying on data or endless meetings? Oddit's unconventional approach has turned heads—stripping away feedback loops, simplifying designs, and focusing on clarity above all else. Oddit co-founder Shaun Brandt joins to share his experience delivering over 10,000 UX audits, helping brands increase conversions by fixing the basics.
🎯 Episode Highlights:
👤 About Shaun Brandt:
Shaun Brandt is the co-founder of Oddit, a UX design firm known for its unique approach to conversion optimization. With over 10,000 audits under their belt, Oddit helps Shopify merchants strip away the fluff and focus on what really matters: clarity and user experience. Shaun’s team specializes in delivering high-value audits without the typical meetings and feedback loops, offering merchants clear, actionable improvements that drive results.
Kurt Elster
This episode is brought to you in part by Omnisend. Yes, that Omnisend. Alright, Shopfire friends. Are you ready to take your e-comm game to the next level? Then you've gotta check out Omnisend. the go-to tool for supercharging your Shopify store. With OmniSend, you'll be launching pre-built e-com automations in no time. segmenting customers based on their shopping behavior, and even trying out SMS or push notifications, all from the same powerful platform. And that's not all, over 100,000 e-com brands trust OmniSend to drive sales and build stronger customer relationships. Whether you're sending quick to create, highly relevant emails, or targeted texts, OmniSend makes it easier than ever to connect with your audience and convert them into loyal customers. Don't miss out on transforming your Shopify store with Omnisend. Check out we even have a link. It's in the show notes. Your dotomisen. com slash unofficial Shopify podcast. Omnisend. Today, my friends, we're going to talk about a topic we've covered before, but one of my favorites, UX, that's user experience and conversion rate optimization. And it is such a deep topic, and there are many experts at it, but I was thrilled to get this particular expert today. See, we have Sean Brand, who is the co-founder of Audit, O-D-D-I-T. which a uh well he'll tell us about it, but a UX design firm where we have been on the receiving end of the audit audits, And I've always been impressed. They have provided some great insight. But it's an interesting productized consulting model, and Sean is a wealth of information on the topic. And so we're going to cover common mistakes, quick wins, and actionable tips to boost conversions. This is the unofficial Shopify Podcast, and I'm your host, Kurt Elster. Technasty. Let's dive in. Sean, how you doing?
Shaun Brandt
I'm doing great, man. Yeah, it's a beautiful morning here. I feel like fall and winter are gonna hit us any day here in Canada, but it's beautiful today.
Kurt Elster
And uh your career is has it always been UX?
Shaun Brandt
You know, it it has and hasn't. Um my first agency I started right out of university with the same business partner. I have an audit. Um, that was about fifteen years ago, fourteen years ago. And uh it was very much brand focused and we kind of stumbled into Doing some it was right when apps were becoming a big thing and we started playing around with app design and different product design. Um And I was never really trained in design. I I actually went to business school um but always had kind of an eye for it, I guess. And as we saw the demand grow for product design, application design, websites going away from templates and Now people were making custom, much more custom experiences. We just saw the appetite and we kind of went headfirst in and really just learned on the fly. Um you know, YouTube tutorials, that kind of thing, learning how to design. Um but yeah, I I mean since probably month six of starting my first business, it was revolving around UXU.
Kurt Elster
You electively stumbled into it, we'll say. Uh but tell us about your current venture audit.
Shaun Brandt
When we started audit, it wasn't intentional at all. It was quite accidental. But we were privately consulting and Uh one of the companies we were consulting with was a paid media agency. And I had never really done paid media. You know, I understood it, but I had never done it myself. And I was just blown away at the money brands spend or in my opinion waste uh on on their ad funnels without optimizing their website. Um I I didn't realize the And then insane discrepancy between where brands were allocating funds. We were dealing with brands spending five hundred to a million a month in ads and They had an admin person updating their website, like spending a thousand dollars a month on their website. And to me as a UX person Uh it just made no sense to me. Like there was no way to explain it to me where it made sense. Your ad is click one and your website is likely clicks two through fifteen, right? So we're spending 90%, 95% of your budget on click one and two to five percent of your budget on the other ninety percent of the clicks. So it was just a huge discrepancy to me. Um and so we started analyzing and assessing user experiences and we would just give them a little simple report or a loom video. um on saying, hey, like fix all these little things on your site. I think it's gonna help ads convert better. It's gonna help your CAC. It's gonna help everything, uh, including hopefully conversion. And we started doing these just as a part of a consulting with the paid media agency. And every single one of the sites we did it for, all the numbers went green. We saw every ad number go up in terms of you know, all those sweet little numbers you want to see performing better from the ad standpoint, and we saw their conversion rate going up. And so that's when I learned what conversion rate optimization was. Um actually had no idea what it was, thought it meant um chief revenue officer. didn't really know the acronym at all and uh realized that that's what we were doing. We were we were doing conversion rate optimization. And so You know, coming from an agency background, um, part of selling that agency was not wanting to do those such objects anymore. But a lot of getting out of that agency was complete hatred for the agency model, I think. tr digital agencies, brand agencies, creative agencies, they've turned into law firms. They're just scouring every crevice of a client relationship to bill ours. And I just I just Honestly, find it disgusting. And and so we set out to make audit kind of an anti-agency. We don't advertise it that way, but it's very clear once you interact with us that that's what it is. Um and so we kind of You know, we set out to to create audit. We did a few reports and and decided we were gonna productize it for the real just reason we didn't want to deal with clients anymore. Um there was no strategic like this report is gonna make things better for them. It was really the report was going to make things easier for us. Um because if we delivered a report, we didn't have to pitch them. If we did deliver a report, we didn't have to have calls. If we didn't have to um you know, pitch it to the CEO and then he's like, oh yeah, this is good. Can you talk to my team? If there's a report, they can just share that across their team and we don't really have to do all of that crap that we're used to doing. Now the benefit to the customer was We're really good at communicating in those types of documents and we're not charging you for phone calls. So the upside is yeah, it was really selfish for us that that's why we wanted to do it. But the benefit to the client was our product is really cheap and approachable. And so once we started doing five, ten, I think we only sold one in our first three months. Um but once we started getting more and more past clients, we would just be like they would hire they would call us to design a website and be like, no, no, no, I think you just need an auto report. You don't know what this is, but trust us. And we started selling a few. And it just kind of snowballed, I think. People were really initially caught off guard by our model because it for anyone that's not familiar, you come on our site, you pick which pages you want us to audit, we red mark them top to bottom. tear them apart, redesign them to be optimized for conversion, and then we spit it out with a full Figma file and a report explaining it. And so people were very caught off guard because they're used to dealing with a design agency where there's feedback loops and calls and pitches. And every time a customer asked us for that, we just said, no, we don't do that. And if you don't want that, that's okay. Don't hire us. And I think that Standing our ground on that front really paid to our benefit because people just saw it as a confidence thing, right? They didn't see it as us just not wanting to do it. They saw it as wow, these guys must really know what they're doing if they're they're willing to push away this many customers who don't fit that that model.
Kurt Elster
And it's it's worked out because you've done over ten thousand audits now, right?
Shaun Brandt
Yeah, and it's it's it's kind of the fact that the deliverable was very different, right? Very few people were used to getting their design files. without interaction and they were very not used to getting it with a report explaining every detail and why it was done. Um People were sharing them online and they were sharing them with their team and they were sharing them with their vendors. And so it snowballed and we got a lot of really great people that supported us and talked about it like Nick Sharma and people like that that have a voice in the space and they already have a built-in trust. I don't really think anyone had approached CRO from a non-data standpoint before. Right? People, there's designers doing it, but they weren't calling it CRO. I think we got a lot of backlash from the CRO space and those agencies being like, well, this is a this is a fraud because these guys don't look at your data. And I've never said or I've never, you know, told our customers, don't use traditional zero. Don't go test things. Don't go look at your data.
Kurt Elster
It is frustrating to try and discuss anything conversion rate optimization related online because suddenly you discover everyone you're talking to is a statistician, right? There you will get so many just like gotcha replies. That I just I won't share CRO advice, convert split test results. It just isn't worth it. Why bother?
Shaun Brandt
No, and we got the same backlash. It was How how can you be charging people money to optimize their website without looking at data? And my response is the same every time. I've never like and I I'm holding on to this for dear life until audit doesn't exist. We have never looked at a data point. Not one. If a client shares it, I mark the email as bam, I delete it. I will not open the document. And That's partially because we've preached it so much online that I have to stand by it, but partially because what we're doing is working. So We've done 10,000 of them. We have a money-back guarantee. If you don't like it, you're not happy with it, you don't see value, your conversion doesn't go up. You just email me, I'll send you the money. I don't even give a shit. If you're just being a scam artist and want the money, take it Um and we've done seven refunds in ten thousand orders. And so we're not looking at their data before and I don't know their data after. We get a lot of positive reviews. People have been like, holy shit, our conversion went this way or whatever metric. But the results are unanimously, this is valuable, right? I'm not promising people that their conversion is going to go up. I'm telling them that for $3,000 they're going to get $20,000 worth of work, right? And It's really hard to argue with that when you get one because we go in pretty deep and the deliverable is quite robust, right? These reports range from 50 to 100 pages and you have a full new Figma file of your site. There's very few places that you can get that. So it's very hard for them to argue with the value. And I think one thing that upsets the space a lot is We are seeing conversions go up. We have customers that have 3x conversion for implementing a $2,000 report. And I think that frustrates a lot of businesses that are charging $10K a month to run two tests, right? And not getting those results.
Kurt Elster
I agree with you, but when you're doing a UX audit, I want to what's the first thing you look at? Like what is what's your first impression? What's your rule of thumb here?
Shaun Brandt
The rule of thumb is clear communication. I think when you think about shopping in retail, there's very, very clear signage and monikers and Packaging stands that makes the experience quite easy, right? I'm I'm walking up to the store and I there's only one door. I can only go through the entrance. There's not like a side door that's poorly labeled and you're not sure which there's a fucking front door. You can clearly see it. I walk in the front door. Once I walk in the front door. How much stuff am I planning to get? I have an idea in my head, right? I'm either buying all my kids back to school clothes or I'm buying a Gatorade Do I need a basket? Do I need a cart? Do I need my hands? Those two things are right there in front of me. Carts, baskets, or nothing. Next door, walk through. There's a sign over every aisle telling me where to go, right? Do I need bulk nuts? Do I need dairy? Do I need whatever? Whatever type of store I'm in. Very clearly labeled. The checkouts clearly labeled, exactly where to go. So long-winded way of saying, all we're doing when we go into an e-commerce store is we're trying to apply a lot of that same mentality. Is it clear or is it unclear? And the reason that our method works is because We're approaching these stores just like a new customer. And our like a lot of brands we work with ask, well, have you worked with beauty brands before? Have you worked with you know, coffee brands before or apparel brands. And I my response is always the same. Like it doesn't matter. You're either communicating clearly or you're communicating like shit clearly. So when I land on the site That's what I'm looking for. Is there clarity? Do I understand how long you've been around? Do I understand if people love you or hate you? Do I understand what you're selling and why? Do I understand what stand what makes it unique? And a lot of brands we deal with don't check all those boxes. And they never will, right? Some of them are Amazon resellers, right? And so you're trying to find unique ways to accomplish some of those things. But really all we're trying to do is There's an end goal for them to add to cart and checkout. And there's the start goal of wherever you've driven them from the ad. We're just trying to make that path between those two points. as frictionless as possible. 99% of the time the feedback we get when they receive the audit is is people kind of throwing their hands up and and sighing, being like, how the hell did I not think of this? Right? They're I've never gotten the feedback from an audit report being like, holy shit, I can't believe you guys thought of this. This is groundbreaking. I never would have thought of this. It's always, this is so common sense. How the hell did we not see this? And I'm clicking on an ad on meta. I'm like, my thumb's like this the whole time. I I'm clicking on an ad that catches my attention. Uh you might have my attention for one, two seconds before I'm deciding if I'm gonna leave and go back to meta. So that user is much different than an organic user. You need to capture their attention immediately. They need to understand what you do, why other people love it. And give them an action to take immediately. And if you don't, your conversion's not going to be as high as it could be. It's really not rocket science.
Kurt Elster
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Shaun Brandt
Yeah, I mean the Shopify ecosystem is is kind of copy-paste in a lot of ways, right? Brands are starting from the same template in a lot of cases. And Shopify invests pretty much no money in conversion rate optimization, right? They they're a commerce platform, but they're in the business of making money. It's a public company. And I've been on calls with the Shopify team about optimizing their templates, and I know for a fact they have spent zero dollars on actually optimizing these templates. They're designed to get people's attention, right? They're conversion optimizing their theme store. They're not conversion optimizing their themes.
Kurt Elster
And so I'd argue they they're conversion optimizing their checkout because a good portion of their revenue is a percentage of the revenue that goes through that checkout. So if their conversion rate goes up they can really just tie that back to a quarterly port and then stock price goes up. Right. There's a huge, you know, mul multi-comma value attached to them conversion rate optimizing, at least that checkout.
Shaun Brandt
Yeah, and to be fair, we probably make one comment per checkout across any store because the checkout You know, it's they have done a good job there. And for the brands willing to spend the 3K a month for Job 5 Plus, there's even more things you can do. And they've done a good job of keeping it simple. And when I go to the theme store If they optimized all those themes to be perfectly optimized for conversion, they won't look as sexy, right? I click on apparel or fashion in the theme store, they look beautiful. They look like portfolio sites from Behance. These are not converting sites. The things that are in these themes don't convert well for the most part. And commute like across the brands we deal with, a lot of them are just using templates. And so The things that we're commenting on are almost all the same because they're all using Shopify themes that aren't optimized for conversion. And a lot of them are navigation-based, right? Shopify provides absolutely no guidance. on the back end or set up for how to optimize things, right? Like something as simple as your navigation. They basically let you put anything you want up there. You could have 50, 60 links in there. And you should probably have three. How hard would it be for Shopify to have a tooltip that says, hey, make sure this is your primary actions, right? Things you're selling. Never put your above page in the header. I wish Shopify had tooltips like that because my I mean, it would suck. We would have less clients, but They don't give you any guidance on primary, secondary, tertiary actions and how to implement those into a navigation. That's a paragraph of text that we put in every audit, but they could have done it in the shots fight backend.
Kurt Elster
It's the single most common mistake. That drives me crazy. It's like my pet peeve in Shopify store's main menus having just you know twenty things and half of them have nothing to do with shopping. Right. And to your point is like, you know, about contact FAQ ambassador program wholesale. And then at the event, very end, tiny letters, shop. And it's a drop down and there's everything. And they're like, oh, why my why is my store converted? 0. 1% Uh well, because no one could find anything.
Shaun Brandt
Yeah, and I think Shopify leans on that sentiment of we're arming stores to build however they want to build. And that's fine, but To me, don't you walk like to your point. They make more money when the stores make more money. So I had the same comment to them when we were talking about these. I'm like, why Why aren't we optimizing this? You could still have a sexy facade in the theme store where it looks sexy, but once I get into the theme and I've got it installed on my store, why are you giving me tooltips? Tool tips are like It's such a low-hanging fruit for them to me that just this they could just take everything we do in an auto report, because they're probably more knowledgeable about it than we are, because they actually have all the data of every store on Shopify. And they could be surfacing these tool tips, right? Someone changes a uh add to card button to a stroke instead of a fill. There should be a little warning. Hey. Just an FYI buttons that use a fill on Shopify convert four times more. That's probably roughly what it is. So Like that's that's a couple minutes of work.
Kurt Elster
My my version of that tool tip would be far more terse. It would just say button should look like buttons every time you try and make it look like anything else. Hey a button should look like a button
Shaun Brandt
Exactly. And so, you know, that's a I won't go any further because that's I'm already rump ranting about Shopify, but the things that we see most commonly are the things that come natively in themes and and because there's not a ton of support there. I think a lot of them are navigational. A lot of them are um product page things, um product image galleries where they're just not communicating enough. They're just trying to look sexy, right? And again, that stems from the theme. The theme shows up and it's got seven images of a model in different angles and that's it. And they're like, okay, well this is what my store should look like, right? I I was sold on that sexiness, so I want that sexiness and that's what my theme images are going to look like.
Kurt Elster
Those theme demos drive me nuts because the the demo stores, the examples, because you're right, they really are just a showcase for a whole bunch of stock photos, splash photos. just large, nice photos. The moment you take the photos out of those demo themes, you're like, well, you know, what even what's left? What's here? And so then when you put like your own low res photos in there Uh it just doesn't have the same impact.
Shaun Brandt
No, it doesn't. And you know, some some brands have the ability to get those photos, but it's the same thing, right? Like It wouldn't be hard for them to make recommendations on tools to get photos like that. You know, it'd be very simple stuff. Um another thing that we see commonly in themes that just doesn't work is quick add.
Kurt Elster
Oh. Yeah, the quick view and the quick ad.
Shaun Brandt
Quick ad comes with every theme and it's one of those things, right? When a when a new store is coming out coming, you know, live and the team is small and we're young or whatever reason, um, they look at products like Shopify or other stores and they just think, oh well And it again, that's why it makes me angry, is they look to Shopify and think and think this is the best in the world at e commerce, so this must be right, right? And so they They see everything comes with quick add. And so they're like, why this is free functionality. Why the hell wouldn't we have quick add? This is so easy to add to cart. Why wouldn't I have this? And It doesn't work. Like unless you're a marketplace where I'm adding 75 things to cart, quick add is pointless and it doesn't convert as good. Um And I say that from a data standpoint from speaking with our actual CRO data partners, not from my random perspective. So I think there's a lot of stuff like that where it just comes baked in the theme and Customers or brands just think, oh, Shopify's the best in the world at this. So we'll do that because it was in the test theme where they were trying to sell me on all the functionality it has. And so a lot of what we're doing in audits is is You know, it's kinda like you're in the engine just pulling out needless shit. Um that they they shouldn't be. Exactly. Let's lighten the let's lighten the car and get a few extra uh you know, miles per hour out of it. So I think a lot of it is that, but to be fair, seventy-five percent of what we're commenting on is not Shopify theme stuff. It's it's more the brand and how it communicates, right? So having great images is important, but a lot of those can be created. Um I think we can learn a lot from Amazon and how they present information or how Amazon's the exact opposite. They they arm stores with a ton of information on what's gonna sell best, right? Um imagery wise, content wise. They provide a ton of guidance there and they do a great job of it. Something you know, I think shop rent Shopify brands would benefit a lot from. Um, but I think the most common thing is they just brands get too cheeky, they get too cute, they're they're not communicating fast enough.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, clever Clever never outperforms clear is what I've learned the hard way. Early on, we all want to be clever in our copy. And it's like, you know what? Nobody has time for it. You they don't have time to figure out your tone of voice. You need to just be clear so that they can move on.
Shaun Brandt
Yeah, and I think there's kind of a a point in a brand journey. Where you can almost say nothing, right? Like go to some of the strongest brand like with brand equity brands in the world. the Nikes of the world or even really high fashion brands.
Kurt Elster
Well, Apple, Patagonia, Nike.
Shaun Brandt
You hit a point where you can say nothing, right? When they launched the new iPhone, they could send you to a 404 page and you'll still find a way to buy it. Brands that are coming up look at those big brands, and we have this conversation with our customers a lot. They're like, we love what Yeti does. And I'm like, that's awesome. So do I. Um, you're not Yeti. They're a household name. That's the difference. People have come to know them as the strongest version of whatever product they're selling. And I mean true strength, right? Like I can run over it. So when they launch something, they can be lean with communication. It admittedly the Eddie's actually amazing at communicating. They don't do any of that shit. But A lot of brand in that position, they don't need to communicate as clearly. And so when brands come to us, they come in and they're like, Well We didn't want to say that much. We wanted to be cleaner. We want to be and I'm just like, you can't reference the best brands in the world and replicate them. They they've earned that right They've spent 30 years in some cases, 50 years in some cases building that brand equity so that they don't need a button in the header They've earned that right. You have not earned that right. You got to be clear or nothing. And I think there's just too much. There's too many brands that come to us and they want to replicate what's happening in big brands or on stores that they're seeing success in because they think that because they're doing it that it's the right way to do it. And it's just it only applies to a very few brands.
Kurt Elster
They're playing Fall the Leader, and it the on top of it, many merchants understandably become emotionally attached to the site or certain design elements of it. And so when you say like, hey, this doesn't work, it's confusing, try this instead, they you are personally insulting their baby. And You know, it's not malicious. They know what when the person when the client said, hey, let's improve this website and get a a third party opinion They're not seeing it as they have this emotional investment in the site, but they do. Um do you do you take that into consideration when advising people?
Shaun Brandt
I have no emotional attachment to pretty much anything except my family. And so when I'm approaching clients and they're talking about an emotional attachment, it's something I have very little, from a personal standpoint, very little Issue with telling them reality. The ones that always failed were customers who let their personal opinions influence a business decision, whether it's on the product, whether it's in the brand, every single one of them. failed when they let their personal opinions come into a professional conversation. And so we honestly just to answer the question directly, no, we we account for absolutely zero emotional connection of it. My question is the same. Every time they bring it up, I you know, if if your brand was big enough to have a board of directors, or you maybe you do have board directors, and you're sitting around a table It everyone's North Star is more EBITDA. That's it. And if you're gonna tell me otherwise, I'm calling bullshit, right? Everyone's North Star is EBITDA, not Well, we don't like yellow. I'm sure if I told them if they didn't use yellow and they could add more Ibita, they'd have a pretty clear answer as to whether or not yellow should exist on the site. So I I think we take a pretty firm stance on just either do it the right way or work with someone else. Um I think that the emotional attachment to things has no room in I mean in any business. I think some of them have a legacy or or a certain history that needs to be Kept alive and I I think we respect that, but from a conversion standpoint and a digital design standpoint, I don't think it has any any place
Kurt Elster
I'm hearing some of your intentional anti-agency practices at play here. Tell me about well, if you've removed feedback loops, have you largely removed meetings? Tell me about it. I want to hear more more of your your anti-agency talk because it is thrilling as an agency owner.
Shaun Brandt
So we don't do meetings. Set up the conversation with the client and we let them know. It's one of the first things we let them know. I would say every report we sell One out of ten buys cold off our website, right? They just found out about us, they love it, they understand it, and they buy. Five out of ten do our free trial, they get the free trial back, and then they buy. The other five book a call, never heard of us before, or they have, they've never gotten a free trial, and they have a f a 30-minute phone call with one of us, one of the founders That is usually 99% of the time the only phone call that happens in a relationship. Um, and on that phone call, we we very make it very clear there is no phone calls. Um and the way that we position it is really simple. It's it's exactly what I was just saying. Projects fall apart when the client gets an opinion. I there's very few things that they're gonna tell me. about user experience design that they know more about. And if they do know more, then they shouldn't be hiring me and I'll tell them that. If they have a UX team that's really talented and they're just trying something new, there's usually a little bit of issue. But I think a lot of them respect the fact that we stand by that we're good at our jobs. And if they want to trust us with that We're gonna give them a fair price and a really high value product. And if they don't want to trust us, that's okay. We're always gonna be here. Come back when you're ready. But we really don't make any concessions there. If they ask for a feedback loop, I tell them to go somewhere else every time. They don't there's no option. There's not like a $500 feedback fee. It's it's a no every time.
Kurt Elster
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Shaun Brandt
It's it's not even to say that feedback loops don't don't work. I think Our deliverable and our intent with how we deliver design is much different than an agency, right? Let's say that you're hiring, there's two paths. You can hire a design agency to redesign your website, or you could hire audit to optimize the design. In the day's design agency path, you're paying them to come out the other end with a brand new website based on a lot of stuff you've already thought of and you're like, we want to see this, we wish we had this, launching these new products. And so it does require feedback, which there's there's a ton happening there, and it's a huge undertaking. In our path, we're saying you have a 40-page website, you pretty much need to optimize two to three templates of that website. We're going to look at them from a third party perspective. We're going to give you 150 ideas on how to do that. And your team can sit back with this report. digest it and decide do we want to make 150 of these changes, 10 of these changes, half the changes, do we want to let roll them out over three years? Do we want to test them? Do we want to implement them? It's not meant to be go take this and implement it tomorrow and it's it's the you know your new North Star. It's meant to spur conversation. And a lot of it's gonna work for them, but it's meant to educate them, it's meant to spur conversation, it's meant to get their team out of a rut. It's not here's your new site design, go design, go go build it. Um and so I think removing feedback loops when you explain it that way is is effective, right? It's it that's why we called it audit. It when I w if I was to get audited by a five you know, by the the IRS or the CRA, they're not asking my opinion. It's a one-way path, right? We're auditing it. We're we're giving you the perspective of what is wrong and delivering you a report on that. And you can have as many opinions as you want, they just don't matter to us. You guys can change, you know, you see may see a recommendation from us and be like, oh, I love that idea. But we want to stick with our brand blue in that butt. That's all good. We're not gonna argue with you. There's we're not even having a conversation, so there's no argument to be at. If you want to tweak things Totally, you're right. Um and so I think that approach for us has proven really effective. And I think, you know, the first year we had some pushback from clients where they would just they would say, you know, okay, well we're not okay with this model, so we're not gonna hire you. But over the last few years, I mean it's I can't tell you how many calls we get off of from a sales call and they're like What a breath of fresh air that we don't have calls. We don't have feedback loops. We don't we don't want to dilute the process. We don't want to dilute the output. We want to see what a professional thinks of this unfiltered. And so I think people are seeing the value in that and and at the end of the day, like I said, it's it's working. So all the the sites are increasing in conversion. So
Kurt Elster
Well I've enjoyed you w when we a client goes it gets a an audit report. And then generally what they'll do is they'll bring uh they'll s they'll pull out of it They will cherry pick from it the optimizations that they're considering. And then they'll hand those to us and go, all right, like what's the low-hanging fruit here? What can we do quickly? Which what do you agree with? What should we try? And you know, what should be phase two? And it it's just valuable to have like, okay, here's just new input. Do with it what you will. From my perspective, you know, doing the the theme work in Shopify, I'm, you know, I'm thrilled to have like, oh, here's a list of personalized ideas tailored to this client's website. Take it or leave it. Yeah, you you will get the value out of it that you choose to put into it. I'm in. Um so I'm I'm already I'm already sold on this idea that it's how you got here because I've I have seen the value myself. But I wanna uh uh to wrap this up, I've got some few I have a few quick questions for you. Give me one trend that you're watching right now.
Shaun Brandt
sites that are removing headers completely. And so they're not intro they're not introducing the brand and you know the big traditional sexy headline button, sexy image or video. They're just tossing you right into here's our best selling product categories, right? And the headline is like a little banner at the top, really thin. They just ditched the header completely. Um I think I really love the aesthetic of it. I have no idea if it's working or not. But the ones that are doing it, um They seem to be having success with it. So I'm really interested to see if it pours into the Shopify eco, like it in the theme system, when all of a sudden we'll see a theme where there's no header and And it'll just get right into product cards. So that's one thing that I'm really interested in. Um we're seeing more and more people that want to customize checkout. We're seeing more and more people um A lot more people focus on bundling versus single products. Not that bundling is new, but we're seeing brands step away for even selling single products. And they're just saying you buy them together or you go buy them. Um, which is a really interesting proposition, right? Because it naturally is going to boost your AOV, but probably lower conversion. So you're always trying to find that balance.
Kurt Elster
What's the one thing you wish merchants would stop doing?
Shaun Brandt
putting a add note field in their cart.
Kurt Elster
What's the deal with that thing? What it why?
Shaun Brandt
Like unless you're actually selling flowers and they're adding a note to the flowers that are being shipped. I would and again I I say this to every customer, just like every time you're thinking about doing something, just think, have you ever seen this done in retail? E-commerce has been around what 25 years. Retail has been learning what works for Arguably thousands. I always just say think of retail. Have you ever gotten to a checkout in retail? And then the teller's like, do you wanna leave a note for me? What a stupid idea. Like again, it's it's kind of like what we do at audit. It's like there's certain scenarios where there isn't feedback needed. You're complicating the system. That's a small one, but it annoys the hell out of me because every store has it and I don't understand what like what notes are being left. I don't get it.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, no, I agree with you. Uh pop-ups. Love them or hate them? How does this fit into our retail analogy?
Shaun Brandt
I look at pop-ups as the you've got the aisles of products and then you've got the one in the middle that like they got prime placement, they got their own stand and it's like you know, it's it's a special price or a special offer. Um I think in in D to C pop ups can be great. I think that the the issue with them is a lot of brands And it's the same thing, right? They see other brands do it and so they do it. And it just becomes this virus and everyone has them immediately. Um, and so I think they can be great, but I think too many people use them as Hey, we only have a second of your time, so we're going to give it to you immediately. Which, in my opinion, surfacing a discount immediately just instantly hurts the brand, right? It's like you haven't even interacted with our products, you haven't looked at them. And before you've even thought about it, I'm going to slap you with a discount because we have no faith that you're going to buy it at full price. That's what it, as someone who overanalyzes these things, that's what I'm thinking. And so I think they can be really effective if they're tasteful. They can be really effective if you make them multi-step. So surface a micro decision instead of saying give us your email and you'll get free shipping. Say Do you want free shipping? Yes, no. Zhen asked for the email, right? Now they're into the funnel a little bit deeper. And then the big thing is Absolutely never surface it immediately. It should be on second page click. It should be um once they get down to 75% of the page. Somewhere where they've actually understood what the hell you sell and why it's great before you're giving them a discount, or on exit intent. A lot of the times what we do and and to make it the simplest for customers to understand is we just say Look at your average time on site, let's say it's 70 seconds. Cut it in half and tribute your pop-up at that half point. Doesn't matter where they are, doesn't matter. Just 35 seconds, hit them with a pop-up. Um Is there any data behind that? No. But I'm trying to get them to have a really simple formula to not surface it immediately.
Kurt Elster
I like that. I like that as a rule of thumb. That's really good. Yeah, nothing screams small business like Uh the welcome discount email pop up on page load. Like I don't even know if I'm in the right place. And now I gotta decide do I dismiss this pop-up and hope I could find it later when I'm looking for this coupon that I'm sure is already leaked? Or uh do I fill this out in the hopes that, you know, maybe I remember this later. I like your approach.
Shaun Brandt
To go back to retail, it's very similar to when you go, you know, say you're driving down the street and you see those stores with almost offensive amounts of signage for a sale, right? When it's like I got an email about a sale, that's one thing. But when I drive by the store and every window is covered in a warehouse sale Just be honest with me. It means you're going out of business, right? So it just it it immediately gives me no trust, right? I'm like, this is a sale because you couldn't make your business succeed, which gives me immediately lower trust. in your products, right? You weren't selling enough to make it work. That's why you're having a warehouse sale. You're selling off all the shit no one wanted to buy. And so I have no trust in your brand anymore. And it's the same thing with a pop-up, right? If you hit me with it that loudly, I think, you know, I think that's a good idea. The customer isn't thinking that, right? It's I'm over I'm being dramatic about it, but you know, subconsciously, that's what it makes you think. They're not they don't believe in their product.
Kurt Elster
Inspire confidence, we'll put it that way. So I bet there are sites that have great experiences, sites that that you like. And it's tough, you know, working as in web development or the web space as long as we have. I just give me a plain text website with links, right? But There are there's some some good ones in there. What's your favorite?
Shaun Brandt
I going back to Yeti, I think they do a fantastic job of blending what works, what converts. their aesthetic, their key value props, right? They've gotten to a that state, I think, where they can pull whack from that a little bit, but they haven't. They've They lean even further into it. And whether it's their product image galleries or the PDPs, they communicate every nut, every strap, every detail of the product, and why it's worth every dollar you're spending. And I think a lot of brands miss that, right? They just slap a price on of like, oh, we paid this, so we gotta charge this. And then they spend very little time on site explaining and trying to justify that price in the user's mind. And I think Yeti is one of those that does an amazing job of that. Um there's a footwear brand called Olkai. It's like sneakers, slippers, sandals. Um they they became really well known for the shoe where the the back kind of folds in so you can almost just step into it and not, you know, almost without ruining the back of the shoe. They do a really good job.
Kurt Elster
The you know, I think the thing people need to focus on is like, hey, how quickly can I find what I'm looking for on a site? Is that that represents is it easy to use? Does it make sense? Why is it that way? And if like that may be why you like the site, okay, then it's good inspiration, but it's got nothing to do with often nothing to do with the branding, right? It's less about aesthetic and more about layout and ease of use. But your brain doesn't necessarily register it that way, does it?
Shaun Brandt
Across the board, the the brands that people listening should draw inspiration from are when you land there as a new brand or something that you're shopping, it's I don't even know how to explain it. You know when you go into a certain retail experience and you're like, oh, I just feel at home like you want to spend money. Yeah, like you get in there and you're like, oh, I'm just gonna spend so much money You know, I Ikea is so good at that, right? Like you get in there and it's so hard to not walk out with something even though it's all trap. Like it's you get at home and you're like, God, this is so blimsy. Like it's not a good thing. Yeah, they're just so good at making you spend money. And uh that's all very intentional, right? That's they're a masterclass on on getting you through there and making sure that you walk out with something. Focusing on sites, regardless of whether I like it or not, on sites that just communicate really clearly, right? Don't focus when you're looking for inspirational least. Don't don't look for sites that are really clean or really you know, beautiful. Do you understand what they do really quickly? Uh can you get where you need to go really quickly? Is it is it simple? Is it clean uh clean, sorry, clean UX? So like Is it is it fairly simple to add the card or are they making it too complex? Um those are the things that I look for.
Kurt Elster
If we wanted to hire you, where would we go?
Shaun Brandt
You would go to audit. co od. You can book a discovery call with us on there. Those calls We're very we're very much not bushy salesmen. Um usually how those calls go is we give you th 30 minutes of free advice and we tear down your site live. Um So if you want to book a call and just have us look at your site together with you and go through some of the problems you're having, happy to do that. You can also try audit free. There's a free trial you'll see on our site. Effectively what that is is you submit any URL. We ship you back one section of your site redesigned and optimized with a little mini report within 48 hours. I mean highly recommend that. If there's no obligation, there's no credit card, you just put in your error and we ship it back.
Kurt Elster
Um that's a low risk proposition
Shaun Brandt
Yeah, I I I highly recommend it for anyone just to understand even if you never hire us, it's it's always good for Brez to see, okay, what am I missing? What what's like what types of things is audit talking about? Because you'll see in that free trial. It's the same thing I was talking about earlier. You're not going to be blown away. You're not going to be like, holy shit, this is what our site could look like. No. You're going to think, ugh, that's so simple. Why the hell didn't we do that? And you're going to go do it. Um, and I think it Just as much as it's a sales tool for us, I think it's a really effective way for brands to have a bit of an eye opener of like a bit of a fresh perspective, a way to think of things differently on their current site. And so I highly recommend anyone do it. And there's no, yeah, most of our clients are D to C, but we audit SaaS tools, we audit service companies, we audit, we've audited agency sites, you name it. Um so don't be shy, submit it and uh we'll take a look.
Kurt Elster
Uh absolutely. I should take you up on that offer. Sean Brandt, audit. co. Thank you so much.
Shaun Brandt
Awesome. Thanks, Kirk.
Kurt Elster
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