Anaita Sarkar on Fixing the Website Leaks Killing Sales

Anaita0:00
Hi guys, uh, okay, so let me share my screen. It's so nice to see people that I recognise as well. Uh, I am going to share that and put that on full screen. Can you guys just do a thumbs up if you can see that just fine? All right, amazing. Okay, so what I'm going to talk to you about today is very niche. It is really to do with your website and how that fits into the funnel. Because I think what ends up happening is when you go to a lot of these masterclasses, it's so much of this like high-level stuff, and then you walk away and you don't actually know what to implement. But these are some really, really cool things that I have done this year that have really helped me. And I know that a lot of bigger companies, especially in America, use these strategies as well. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about the funnel. And if you have ever like read my book or you follow my content or you know anything about me, you know that I talk about the funnel a lot, and I want to talk you guys through it just now so you get really clear on what I am talking about and where website strategies fit. So when we have a funnel, we've really got 3 main parts, and that's what they teach you at university. So they teach you the top of funnel, which is people who like have— are in your target market, but they've never heard about your brand before. You're trying to get them to— and you're pushing them through the funnel to the next part, which is middle of funnel. So they've heard about you, and they may have kind of like followed you on social media, and then they've done nothing further than that. Bottom of funnel is really, they've done more than that. So they've, they've visited your website, they've maybe added to cart, they've followed you on social media, they've engaged with you, but again, no purchase. And then you've pushed them through, they've now made a purchase. And then the last two parts are the parts that don't teach you at university, which is customer retention. So after they've made a purchase, getting them to come back and make another purchase and a few more purchases. And then the last part is the magic bucket, which is essentially getting them to not only purchase from you, but feeling like they don't ever want to not purchase from you and they become your brand ambassadors. So when we're talking about website strategies, it's really about that middle and bottom of funnel part because the top of funnel, they haven't, they don't know about you. They have never seen your website. They don't care. Middle of funnel, they have visited your website. And what we're trying to do with the website is trying to get them to add to cart, and at the bottom of funnel, what we're trying to get them to do is make a purchase. And so that's where website strategies fit. So it's people who have heard about a brand but haven't bought anything from the brand. That's where we're sitting right now. Okay, so usually what happens in this stage is I always break it out into paid strategies and free strategies. And when you're at this part of that funnel, you— to get traffic to the site and for people to actually make a purchase from you at this point. We use Facebook Ads and Google Ads for paid, and then for free, we're looking at all of these tools. But today, like I said, we're focusing on website optimization. Um, and I think it's something that is done once and people forget to look at it. And I think what ends up happening is they'll look at the product description, they might add some more images, and they think that's what optimising a website looks like. But there is so much more to it. So let's start with a little bit of data for 2025. So compared to last year, which is— I think this is quite insane, to be honest with you. Across the board, traffic has decreased by 3.3%. Consumption, or what I like to call engagement on a website, has decreased by 6.5%. Things like bounce rate have increased and conversion rate has decreased by 6%. That's a, that's a huge amount, right? This is across the board for a lot of different e-com brands. So what we're trying to say is that people are coming to your website. It's getting harder to bring people to the website. It's getting, it's harder to convert them into a sale. So if they are there, we need to do everything in our power to make sure that they go through and they make a purchase. So you'll notice that at every stage of the website, each page has a job to do. The homepage has the job of taking you to a product page or a collections page. That page has the goal of hitting add to cart. The cart makes you want to go to checkout and the checkout has to make you wanna purchase, right? So we're gonna go through each of those. A little bit more data for you. If I can just move this over here. So like we know traffic has decreased by 3.3%, but what's really interesting is that a cost of a visit has increased by nearly 10%. So we are paying a lot more to get people to the website. So if there's anything I can ask you to do as a quick win to make more money in your business is to fix the website. Everyone goes straight to fixing ads and adding ad creatives, and while I love of that, if you fix the website, I'm going to show it to you with case studies in here as well, I can tell you that you are going to make more money pretty quickly. All right, so let's talk about how to have a website that actually converts. First thing I always want to talk about is speed, but I want to give you an idea of what speed looks like. So when you guys are analysing the speed of your website, the first thing you're going to do is go to Google PageSpeed Insights, and you're going to do that today, and you're going to type in your website, and you're going to look at specifically mobile speed because we know like 80 to 90% of your traffic is going to be mobile. And I want this number— they give you a number out of 100— that number should really be sitting at like 85 to near 100, right? I analysed a lot of e-com brands, like big ones in Australia, and a lot of them are sitting between 30 and 50, and it's terrible. So I went to their website and had a look, and they have videos all across the main banners, and then it takes ages to load the pop-up. And I just think like for such big brands, it's a very interesting thing that they still get so much traffic, but they are losing out on a lot of sales and that conversion rate. They'd have such a big drop-off in conversion rates simply because they've got a slow website. So speed of a website not only makes people want to purchase because it's fast and they get to what they need to really quickly, it also helps with your SEO. Um, and it tells Google that you are worthy of ranking high in Google search results simply because you have a fast website and they penalise people or brands that don't have a fast website. So the two main metrics I want you to look at when you're at Google PageSpeed Insights is your first— and I don't know if I'm saying this word right— but first contentful paint and largest contentful paint. And those two metrics— so the first one, so first contentful paint is the first thing that loads on your website, how long that takes. And then the largest contentful paint is the last thing that loads on your website. For anything that's going over 2 seconds is too long.

Audience member6:53
Right?

Anaita6:53
I'm going to show you an example now of a brand that we all know and their Contentful panes are taking way too long. But I will say this. So this is something that I found which I thought was really interesting. 40% of people abandon a website if it doesn't load in under 3 seconds. 40% of the traffic that you have paid for that is now costing you almost 10% more than it was last year. 40% of those people are abandoning your site. All right, so I'm going to use Step One as an example. So I put Step One underwear into Google PageSpeed Insights and it popped up with 34 out of 100, which is exceptionally low. It's a great website, great products, really they do like $86 million a year, so they're not struggling, but I could make them more money, right? Because 34 out of 100 is pretty bad. Their first contentful paint is 3.2 seconds. The first thing to load is 3.2 seconds. Like imagine getting to a website and just waiting for that amount of time. And the largest Contentful Paint, which is, I think, their popup, it takes 27 seconds for it to finalise in showing up to the customer. That is an awfully long time. And in 27 seconds, the customer has already kind of scrolled through or clicked through, and then all of a sudden it's coming up at the wrong time. So I feel like this is a terrible way to have a website. But I wanna show you the numbers behind this. So say for example, so I looked up their traffic overview, their organic traffic and just organic traffic, they're getting 60,000 people to their website through organic means, which is Google organic, right? Or SEO. So based on the data that we know that 40% of people leave a site if it doesn't load within the first 3 seconds, 40% of 60,000 of their traffic is 24,000 less people would abandon their site If their conversion rate is 2%, which we know the average is around about 1, maybe 2 if we're lucky, that's another 485 orders more, more orders per month. And if their average order value is $100, that's an extra $48,000 in revenue simply by not doing anything other than speeding up their site. And when I say speeding up your site, I mean going to a freelancer and saying, "I'm going to spend $100 or $150, and I need you to remove all the old JavaScript, and I want you to speed up my site." And that's something that we do on a— probably once every 3 months I do it because I'm always, like as all of us do, I keep adding more Shopify apps, more Shopify apps, more Shopify apps, and I keep trying to make this website look pretty and entertaining and engaging. So every few months I have to go in, get a freelancer to speed up the site. And just so you know, if you use platforms like freelancer.com, fiverr.com, and there's another one, you— when people are always asking me like, how do you choose the right freelancer? And it's basically you're looking at their reviews and you wait for a period of 24 hours when you put up a job or a task, and you just wait for the good reviews to come through. It's a really basic thing to do to speed up a site. It's not very technical. So if you have someone there with a lot of reviews and they can show you examples with their portfolio and things like that, they're okay and they're safe to choose as well. Okay, so speed was the first thing that I want you to do. And when I am telling you guys to do this stuff, please do it. If the speed thing is something you can do today, so after this, I'd really like you to go and investigate what your speed is and how you can speed up your site. Second thing I want you to do is to use your data. And I have a 3-step process here for how to use your data to improve your website. So what we know here is that conversion rate is down by 6% across the board. All right. And I think that because paid spend is so much higher, like I said, when you're getting people to the site, you may as well convert them into a sale. So my 3-step process to improve the entire site, or at least the specific pages that you want to change on the site, goes like this. So the first step that I would do is I would go to Shopify or whatever website tool you're using, and I would cheque the report. So you click on analytics, you go to reports, and then you click on the report that says sessions by landing page. And it will give you, like, choose the time period that you want, perhaps 30 days. And then I want you to choose the top 5 landing pages. For me at Hero Packaging, I did this yesterday, I think, or the day before. And you can see it's the homepage, it's our product pages, so custom boxes, our tissue paper, another box page, page, mailers, and tote bags, right? So I would say, okay, these are the pages I know people are visiting, especially because I'm paying for a lot of traffic, right, from Facebook ads to come to these pages. These are the pages that need to make people convert. So I take note of my top 5 pages. And then what I do is I download like a heat mapping tool or a live tracking tool. And I feel like I have spoken about this a bit, bazillion times, and I feel like people are not listening. So what I want you to do is I want you to download— it's not Hotjar, because Hotjar does cost you a lot of money. Lucky Orange also costs you a lot of money. So I use Microsoft Clarity, which is free, and it gives me everything that I need to do. And what you do is you essentially download Microsoft Clarity and you put in your website and let it track. So you let it track over 3 days, 7 days. Mine's been running now for, you a year, I can log in anytime and I can see what the trends are with where people are dropping off on the website, on specific pages. Are they not adding to cart because they keep clicking on something? Are they rage-clicking? It'll tell you how many times people are rage-clicking on something because they can't find something. It'll tell you all the JavaScript that's annoying people. You can actually watch them live. And as creepy as that looks like, it's such a cool thing to do because you can see that, okay, this person only spent 40 seconds on my entire site. And they went to 2 pages and you can watch them across the pages, what they did, and then where their last click was, where they left the site. It's a really cool exercise to do. And I highly recommend you doing this once a week, just tapping in there and having a look what goes around. So step 2 is using the heat mapping and live tracking tool. So Microsoft Clarity to analyse the pages that we just pulled up before. So you've gone into Shopify reports, you've picked out your top 5 landing pages, you're using a heat mapping tool and you're looking at those pages to see where people are clicking. So you can see here, this is my website, right? So you can see the first thing that they click on on the homepage is the mailers. On a desktop, it's my blackmailers, but on mobile it's not. Blackmailers is number 3. Um, so it's a really interesting thing to do there as well. Now, what you can do, which is the best thing to do, which I don't see many people doing, is that you export this data and it gives you, um, like 3 options to export it in. I think it's CSV, PDF, and another one. I've tried downloading all of them, but for the next step, you must download it as a CSV. So go to those pages, the specific top pages that you want, export that from Microsoft Clarity as a CSV. And then the third step is to take this into ChatGPT. And specifically ChatGPT-5 has given me better results than ChatGPT-4. So if you're paying for ChatGPT, then You know, Fiverr has already been upgraded for you and it is just so good. So I take that CSV, I upload. So each page is a CSV, right? So like, say for example, my homepage CSV, I upload that into ChatGPT and I just ask it, what, what are the issues with my homepage and how can I optimise that? I do that for every single page and the stuff that they say is really interesting. And a lot of the time they'll tell me things that I kind of already knew. Like, for example, let me give you an example. On the homepage, like, I had this, um, a banner item which it told me to remove, um, and I was like, that is so smart because it was taking up so much time to load. But I thought it was such an engaging banner that— but then I realised no one's clicking on it, no one even looked at it, it wasn't even the top 10. So I removed that banner, and now I can see that when— by moving my bestsellers to the top has actually helped me with my conversion rate. So similarly, you can do that for everything. I think that the homepage is one thing. I think a lot of traffic that you're driving is usually to collections pages or product pages. So I would start there above anything else.

Audience member15:49
Okay.

Anaita15:50
So using your data. So step 1 is using a Shopify report, finding the top landing pages. Step 2 is to put it into a heat mapping tool. And then step 3 is to use ChatGPT to optimise the website and figure out what you can do. And then maybe a bonus step 4 is to take that to a freelance So for the things that you can't do and say, hey, I just really need to update XYZ. Okay, so homepage quick wins. I would like to say here a controversial thought that I have with every homepage is that I think main banners are dumb. A lot of the time with the e-commerce business, right, you have this main banner that you see. You see it across all e-com, like the best of the best, you know, Showpo, and Princess Polly, the brands that have been around for such a long time, they've got huge amounts of traffic, great conversion rates, lots of revenue. They've got this banner and it's been like that for 15 years. A main banner, sometimes it's a video, sometimes it's a great image and then a call to action button and then they take you to a collections page and it's a new collections page and then you've got to find the thing. What we did with Hero Packaging is we removed the main banner completely and we just put in the— I'll go back and I'll show you what I'm talking about. So if you can see here on the left-hand side, We removed a main banner and we just went straight to what people want. Now, of course, we are a B2B business, so of course people are just looking for packaging. They're not looking to be entertained in any way really on our site, but I want you to think about this for your website, especially if you've got lots of SKUs, a lot of products, or a lot of services. I want you to be really, really mindful that people just need to get to where they want to go. They don't actually care about your video, and that's the truth.

Audience member17:38
Right?

Anaita17:38
So it would be worthwhile you testing for a week removing a main banner and just moving these up and then for a week having the main banner and having a look at your conversion rate or having a look at time spent on site as well.

Audience member17:52
Okay.

Anaita17:52
Homepage quick wins. The thing that I will always recommend and I will die on this hill is that all information should be available to everyone within 1 to 2 clicks. Um, regardless of what you sell, people need to find what they're looking for within 1 to 2 clicks. So, You know, a lot of the time I am browsing on Instagram and I'll see a dress that I love that's come through as an ad and I'll click on it and it'll take me to the homepage of a site or a collections page. And it will take me so long to find that dress that I was looking for that I leave. Okay. So depending on where your traffic is coming from, you need to make sure that people are finding the thing within 1 to 2 clicks. Now that looks like having a call to action button that is very strong and cohesive throughout the homepage. So this one is Jolly Skin, and I really love them. They only actually have one product though, okay? And that is the shower head. And it basically, it's a filtering system where they filter out the water to make it cleaner water and healthier water for your skin and your hair. So you can see that the call to action is like one across all the panels. Like it's shop filtered shower head, shop the shower head.

Kirsten Scott19:03
That is it.

Anaita19:04
And it's very clear. It's not confusing at all. The menu is fantastic because they've got the filtered showerhead, they've got the replacement filter, and then they've got more if you want more. A lot of the time, like, we used to think that the About Us section, everyone wants to read our About Us section. Actually, not many people are reading that anymore. People are just getting to what they need. And so having a very, very easy way to find the information and the products is the best thing on a homepage. The second thing I want you guys to do is, you know, the social proof that you think you have where you say, "Over 200 reviews." Okay, we need to put that on steroids and you need to put that all over the homepage. So I'm talking about like before the scroll, having like this many social media followers, or Trustpilot has given us this review, Google Reviews has given us this, this testimonial here. Even before the scroll, it seems like a lot, but But remember, we are optimising for new customers. We're optimising for new people. And the real way to get new people to be convinced to buy from you is the fact that they think other people have bought from you and other people like you. So social proof before the scroll, multiple times, not just the one little 5-star review rating. I want you to think about how else you can do it. Can you take your best reviews and copy and paste them, um, as the hover-over image? Or can you have like a reviews navigation thing where if they hover over in the menu item, it drops down with your best review? Or can you have like, um, how many people have bought from you in the last however long? Or can you have how many Instagram followers you have? I know it sounds so petty when you say I've got 10,000 Instagram followers, but people like it. Like, I would look at that and go, okay, yeah, like they're a legitimate business. If I've come through from organic sources, or if I've come through from recommendation or a link from somewhere or an ad, and I come through and I don't see any kind of social proof and I just see what the brand is telling me, I don't trust it as much. So try and up the social proof that you have on the website. Oh, sorry, on the homepage. So two things, homepage, again, all information within one click. So can I just go back to this for a second because it's something that I missed. When you are naming your collections pages and naming your product pages, because for you, when you're calling it something really airy-fairy, like the Aura Collection or like the, you know, whatever it is, right? People don't know what that is. Remember, your current customers might know because it's a new collection, they've been waiting for it, they've hyped up, blah, blah, blah. If it's a new customer, they have no idea what these collections are. Be clear as to what you sell. Even if you have that main banner, can you be more clear about what you sell and don't just say fluffy language for the sake of it or it sounds nice nice in marketing. Be very specific. Even in your call to action, some people like to be creative with it. Don't be creative with it. Tell them where they're going. Okay? Menu items must be a very clear process and order the menu and the navigation in order of where you actually want people to go. Not just simply a new collection. If you want people to go there first, absolutely. But if you know you want your bestsellers and then the sales, if you've got a sales page, if you want people to click there to clear all your old put that first or second. All right, social proof. Okay, those are my two quick wins for homepages. For product page quick wins, it's only one, which again is the same as the homepage, and that is the proof. So I've taken this, um, site which is True Classic. I don't know if anyone knows of True Classic in America. It's a men's t-shirt brand which is incredible. Like, I don't know how they've grown so fast as a men's t-shirt brand, but they're now in the hundreds and hundreds of millions within a few years. And the way that they do their product pages is phenomenal. So I'm gonna give you this example, and I'm also going to give you IM8. So just write that down 'cause I don't have that here, I don't think. IM8 is David Beckham's new supplements brand, and their product pages are, it's probably the best product page I've seen in the last few years. And True Classic does this really well. And what they do is they put social proof everywhere on their product pages, and I think it's a huge factor in how they get people to add to cart. So they've got the reviews, the 5-star reviews. So when you have a Shopify site, obviously, you know, we have the stars in the buy box. We've got the stars and the number of reviews, and when you click it, it scrolls you down to the bottom of the page and it gives you all the reviews and the testimonials and all this sort of stuff. I'm asking you to think about how you can show more social proof on the product pages near the add to cart button. So what they've got here is a lot of Tolstoy videos underneath add-to-cart button. If you don't know what GoTolstoy is, it's basically the videos on your website. What I would like you to do is put videos near the add-to-cart button. It doesn't necessarily need to be branded, but I would love video reviews. You know when people submit a video review for you, you take that, turn it into a Tolstoy, and put it near the add-to-cart button so they're not having to scroll down to the bottom of the page to see all the reviews. Pick your best one. Ones and have that as a carousel of video testimonials underneath the add to cart or even above the add to cart. Also, something that I'd really love you to do is the product images have testimonials in the product images. So as they're scrolling across, they are scrolling through your brand images, the e-commerce images, lifestyle images, and then they come to a UGC image with a testimonial, another one with a testimonial, another one with a testimonial, and then you can go back to your e-com images. But thinking about stuff creatively and thinking about how you can have social proof in all the different aspects, even in Shopify, in your product page, you can add like a section or a block, right? When you go to your customised theme, you add a section between the buy box and the product images, and then the next section, and you can have there like a rotating or a scrolling banner of social proof, and that people's eyes are led to there as well. So something that we have done is, you know, we'll say something like 73,000 active customers. I think that makes people go, "Oh, okay, well, if they can trust them, you know, we can do that." With Hero Packaging, another thing that we do is go, "We have these brands that buy from us," right? That just helps other brands to be like, "Great, that is what I want." Social proof everywhere, even when you think it's too much, add more. Okay, so cart elements. These are— there are 3 that I really would love you to have. Now, Now this one is, obviously I'm not making this up. This is not my innovation, but it's a lot of the time when I'm going to each of your websites and you know, I know a lot of you who are on this call and I've been to your websites. A lot of the time it'll say, you know, shipping fees or whatever are calculated at checkout and that's fine because they are calculated at checkout, but you're not putting in any other information in there. What about the shipping times? Can you have a live timer on the cart page where it says, order within the next, you know, 2 hours and your order will be shipped today? Can you have anything that's really going to prompt them to do it quickly? And also it's fighting any, like, of those, you know, the doubts that people have. So shipping information, returns information, especially if you sell fashion, What do you have a free returns policy or do you have a returns policy that's easily clickable or you can write it in a sentence? And then also warranty information as well if you're selling like tech or things that are meant to last like a long time. Just putting a lot of this sort of information in there will make people click checkout. So the cart button, like we said, the cart, sorry, is meant to make people click on the checkout button. That's all we want them to do. The reason we have so many abandoned carts, okay, any brand has so many abandoned carts, it will mostly come down to the fact that they don't really know what the shipping cost is, and that is the truth. If you can have as much information there to kind of settle that or like make them feel like it's going to be okay if you click checkout, then the easier it is for them to get to checkout. Another thing that your cart must have, and this is from I Am 8 again, I really like what they've done here. It's really simple, but they've just put in some extra proof with some USPs and some success data in there as well. So you're like, I don't know if I want to pay $162 for this all-in-one supplement, but then 95% of people reported a boost in energy, and as a mom, I 100% need that. So it makes me want to click checkout because I'm like, this— if it's going to make me feel good, that's great. What I would have added to this cart is also, um, like what people are saying about it. Like just even like one testimonial, I would have had that underneath as well. And the third thing that I love, which a lot of you do, but is a progress or rewards bar. Can we stop here for a second and just talk about the gifts and the rewards that you guys are giving out? Okay. So I listened to a podcast this morning and the podcast was with two guys. One was from Ridge Wallet, which is one of, the fast— it's, it's, I think it's the fastest growing brand or something like that in America. And it's, um, they do men's wallets and men's wedding rings. Um, and they were just saying that they tested this thing where, uh, they did a 5% off or 10% off or something, and then they removed it and they changed the, the progress bar to have like, I think, 10% credit off your next order or 20% cash back, something something different. Usually we're giving money away for the first order, but they're doing credit back or cash back for their second order. They said that the same amount of people took up that deal as they did with the cash, like the refund or the discount code. I think that's interesting because what we end up doing with e-com is giving away a lot of margin all the time for no bloody reason. Our welcome offer is always is $10 off, 10% off, and then if they buy over $150, they get free shipping, and then they go over $250 and they get 15% off, and we are giving away so much money. So the progress bar is trying to get them to go to that next level, but what if that next level didn't cost you so much? And I want you to be a little bit more creative about how you do things. So I'm taking what I learned in that podcast this morning, and I think the tool that they mentioned was a tool called Fondue, And Fondue does this. It's like a cashback thing for Shopify merchants. So I'm going to try that. I'm going to take that to Vic, my co-founder, and I'm going to say we need to test Fondue as well because I'm sick of giving away discounts. But anyway, progress bar is such a great way to make people just go that extra bit further. So like we said, people are already coming to the site. They've added to cart. Now we just want to up their average order value and make sure they go to checkout. So the progress bar can really, really help with that. Especially if you've got a progress bar and then underneath that, frequently bought together with, and have some cheap items in there, like entry-level items to get them over that little bit. Okay, and then this is my bonus tip for websites, which a lot of people forget about. As small business owners, we are really focused on having a great experience. We will do everything for our customers. They'll order something from us and we'll throw in free gifts and we'll write a thank you card and we're like, We're being so good, okay? But what we're not doing is taking that same customer experience and putting that on the website. And I'm going to tell you how Hero Packaging did it because we have transformed our conversion rate. Like, we've gone from, I think, a 5% conversion rate to now we're sitting at like 10 or 11%, which is nuts. And I truly believe it's because of this tip, which is customer experience or customer service. So when we look at our competitor websites, and I want you to look at your competitor websites, and I want you to look at them often too, okay? Because you'll actually learn a lot about what you can do to improve. When you look at your competitor websites, or when we looked at ours, you'll notice that it says Contact Us. So you click on Contact Us and then there's a form, and you're like, oh my God, that is so frustrating. When I go to a website and all I want to do is like, like, ask them a quick question. There's a form, there's like first name, surname, email address, um, what's the message you want to send, we'll get back to you within 72 hours, whatever. That is the most ridiculous thing ever, right? I want immediate service, I want immediate engagement with the brand, just I want a quick answer so that I can go ahead and buy your products or services. So what we did was we go, we went, we are going to optimise this for every single touch point of the buyer journey on the website. And what that looked like is we went through each part of the touchpoint and we said, okay, with emails, like, I don't care what happens, but we need to improve the speed of our email. So if people are emailing us, we need to get back to them within the hour, or at least like as fast as we can. What we didn't realise is that when we increased the speed of our emails, the number of our reviews, of 5-star reviews went up. Up. So we have two types of reviews. We have product reviews and then we also have how was your experience with us reviews, like with the person that handled your experience. Um, and both of those reviews increased when we replied faster to emails. We added phone support as well. Um, and that increased, I mean, I think it's more than 15%. I would say it's closer to like 40, 50% because when we added a phone call, so you can on mobile, you can just click the number and it'll take you to a phone call and we've got three people there. There who are just answering phones all day and they're in the warehouse. If someone says, "I've got a box of this size and I don't know what mailer it's going to fit into," they will run to the packing benches, get a box of that size and fit it in. They'll do a video call and actually tell them the exact thing that they need and then they purchase on the phone itself or they'll direct them to a link on the website. We implemented live chat. Live chat has changed our business and for all of those 3 things, Email, phone support, live chat, and also Instagram and Facebook messages. We use a ticketing system called Gorgias. So everything, every ticket that comes through, live chat comes through, email comes through, Instagram, Facebook messages come through, they come through on Gorgias and it's answered in one inbox. It's really easy for customer service to just go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And then also website forms. We still have that because some people still want to input a website form, but we make sure that we reply to that really, really quickly and we tell them when they're going to be replied to as well. So if there is one thing that I can get you guys to focus on, it is the customer service side of your website. And as a small business, I know this sounds like a lot and you may not want to pick up the phone, but can you add an extra touchpoint? Can you add one extra or two extra things on your website to make people get in contact with you faster? That could even be a WhatsApp number, a WhatsApp Business number where they can ask you questions quickly and you can reply and they can go through and make a purchase. Purchase, you can even send them a link as well to find what they're looking for. But I truly believe that by adding an extra touchpoint, it's going to help you with your conversion rate. And to summarize, so we've got the last bits here. So the first thing I want you to do, fix your website speed, okay? You can do that super easily and you can do that today. Second thing is I want you to look at the report of your top 5 landing pages use a heat mapping tool, and then I want you to take that into ChatGPT and see how you can optimise your site and pick out the easiest things to do and do them first. Number 3 is looking at your menu. Like, have a look at your menu today and see, is it easy for people to find what they're looking for? Number 4, for product pages specifically, is an abundance of proof, just constant social proof and different ways that you can do that. Number 5 is to update the cart with the 3 things that I spoke about. And number 6 think about customer service like touchpoints and how you can have your customers contact you as quickly as possible. And that's it. So let's get to the questions. I don't even know what time it is. I can't see on this screen, but I like— are we on time?

Kirsten Scott36:16
No, we're doing amazing. Thank you, Anita. So guys, I can see quite a few questions have come through, which is awesome. So what I want to do, I'm going to call out your name and you'll be able to ask Anita directly. It is going to be about 3 to 4 minutes per person. I'm going to pop on a timer just so we can ensure everyone's getting time on the call. And what I'd ask you to do is just give a very quick overview of your business just to help Anita answer the question for you. The first person I'd like to ask is Deepa.

Anaita36:46
Hi, Kirsten, how are you?

Kirsten Scott36:50
Hi, Anita.

Audience member36:51
I'm just trying to see what my question was.

Anaita36:53
Oh, I can see it. Which 3 to 5 metrics?

Audience member36:55
Is that the one? No, I think I asked two. I'm just trying to go back. Give me one second.

Kirsten Scott37:01
It says, what are the most common points where customers drop off before purchasing and how can we reduce that friction?

Audience member37:07
Yeah, thank you, Kristen. So hi, Elena. Hi. Beautiful insights. Thank you so much for your time. I'm Deepa Mani. I run a niche beauty business called POC Beauty, which stands for Proud of Color Beauty. So it's a skincare and cosmetic range primarily for for people of color. So my question was exactly that. I'm sort of really struggling in terms of that funnel, struggling at the top of the funnel first and then actually making that conversion and having people come and revisit multiple times.

Anaita37:40
So that's a really big question, right?

Audience member37:44
So is your main question where are they dropping Yes, and I think you've given me insights based on doing that heat map and really trying to analyse exactly those drop-off points. So I have a, so my question was really, I think I'm, if you look at my website, some of the points that you've mentioned, it's pretty clear. Like I go with 2 clicks to get to the add to cart. Yep. But then I see a lot of add to, waiting at the add to cart. And I don't get that conversion going. So that's where I'm kind of stuck.

Anaita38:20
Okay, well, that's very normal. First of all, add to cart and abandoning carts, like, it's a, it's a nightmare. When you look at your abandoned carts in Shopify, it's so toxic. Like, you keep looking at it and you think, why didn't they do it? Like, there's a $400 order in there and they didn't, they didn't convert. And that's all right, that's what happens, right? So I would say everything that I spoke about today is really important, especially for your website. Thing that you're probably not doing enough of, and I'm not sure if you do, is just looking at your data. There is so much data in Shopify. There's so much data in, like, like your heat mapping tools. There's also data in your Google Analytics. You will be able to see so much of where people are leaving your site. I would really ask you to look at the reports and to see how much time people are spending on your site, what pages are most visited. Also, depending on the quality of traffic you're bringing in. So you're saying you're struggling with the top of funnel, but how are you getting people into the top of funnel is my first question, right? If it's just like, um, if you put it in Facebook groups, that quality of traffic is not going to be good enough. But if they're coming from a targeted ad or showing a person of colour using it and the transformation and they're coming through, they've clicked around 2 to 3 pages and then they're dropping off, then there's something wrong with your cart because the quality of traffic is really good. But it's such a broad question, right? Because it really depends on where they're coming from, who they are, are they super interested? And then if they are and then they're dropping off, there is a clear website issue. So then you're going to go into your Shopify reports, you're going to go into your Google Analytics, Analytics and you're going to see, and your heat mapping tool, and you're going to see the issues there. That's all I can recommend. But without having a look at your website right now, it's so, it's so hard to tell. If they're, if they're in cart, perhaps doing the things that I said today in the presentation, testing that for a few days or 7 days and seeing if your abandoned cart rate improves. If it doesn't, then there's a whole other issue going on. Perhaps it's your shipping costs. Costs, perhaps it's the cost of the product that they're worried about. There's a few things in there, but abandoned carts are two things that happen when people get to cart. They have to be retargeted anyway. A lot of the time it will be through your emails or it'll be through your Facebook ads too. So just making sure that they're coming back even if they're too busy.

Audience member40:48
Okay, thanks so much.

Kirsten Scott40:50
Thanks guys. Um, the next one is— hopefully I pronounce this correctly— uh, Micah.

Audience member40:56
Hi, yes, very good. Um, hi Anita. Hi. Hi, um, I know you know my brand Mama Spins Coffee, so my question was around, um, I started it as a coffee brand for pregnant and breastfeeding moms, but we're exponentially growing in the health area and especially men, uh, 45 plus. Oh, and, um, also women, but like lots of men who have more gut issues, etc., will also need a gentle coffee, and they're the most loyal customers um, that tell all their friends and come back. So that's why it's really like taking off. But, um, how do you, how do you optimise the website that, um, that attracts, um, both very different customers, you know, sort of pregnant moms and men 45 plus?

Anaita41:45
There are two ways to do it. One is to have some fun with it. So it, you know, like Mama's Beans Coffee is is it sounds like it's for mums and it sounds like it's for females, but that doesn't mean the copy on the website can't target the men too. And like in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way, like, we might be called this, but it's actually, you know, everyone can use it and have men using it too. And even have your content like as quite funny content about how men— it's like the, like, your biggest, one of your biggest markets is men age 45 plus, and it could be something entertaining. The other thing I would do, I'm thinking about my husband and if it was good for him, he wouldn't go, I don't think, would go to a website called Mama's Beans Coffee and buy coffee for himself there. So something that I would potentially do is create a duplicate site similar to Go To Skincare where they have Bro To as well, which is the exact same bloody product to be honest with you, and it's just, um, the website looks like it's for men, you know, it's a kind of grey tone, white tone, um, and you can do that where it's the same thing. It's like the back end of Shopify where it's like add to cart and goes through to the same thing. Um, if you have men there who are not going to purchase because of the name of the brand, that's a really good thing to do. Um, or you could just play around with it. I think it's really hard when you find out what your target market— like a new target market that's completely different, um, Is a rebrand on the cards for you at all?

Audience member43:19
Yes.

Anaita43:19
Because I think that, that if you're really going to tap into something, a long-term strategy is to do a rebrand where you're not just targeting a niche consumer base anymore. But in the short term, having a separate product— sorry, a separate website almost that's connected in the back end of Shopify where they just click through and it kind of changes the view of it would be really good too.

Audience member43:41
Oh great, so you can have a separate website that goes to the same checkout, etc., just within the same domain?

Anaita43:51
No, it's not the same. It's— you'll have it within the same account, but you've got two separate, two separate Shopify backends, but it's essentially the same account that you're using.

Audience member44:02
Yeah, okay, that's a good tip. Yeah, because someone's like, oh, I'm embarrassed to tell my friends that I'm you know, that I'm drinking Mama's Beans, but it's the only one, the only coffee I can drink. So I know that's a problem, but yeah, I would focus.

Anaita44:16
I would really be focused on a rebrand pretty soon.

Audience member44:20
Yeah. Okay, thank you.

Kirsten Scott44:23
Thank you. Adriana.

Anaita44:29
Hi, I work for a non-for-profit Parenting blog. We don't sell any products, but we run mum and bubs groups around Australia and New Zealand, and we bring out multiple blog posts on parenting each week. So basically my question was around SEO, like ranking on Google. Our articles get tens of thousands of views, but but when you search up Parenting Blogs Australia, for example, we don't come up. Okay, so that's a hard one because the Parenting Blogs Australia is probably like one of the most highly competitive search terms, I reckon. Um, and a lot of big brands like even, you know, um, Kidspot or Mamma Mia, like all of those would rank first simply because they've got a higher domain authority than I wouldn't even try and compete with that right now. I would go more niche. So if you have a specific, like, say a blog post that people are actually searching for, even if it's less traffic, even if it's less searched for than parenting blog Australia, um, if that has, say, 20,000 searches a month, but a very, very specific blog post has only 500 searches a month, that's better for you to rank for anyway. So I would focus on each individual blog post and the question that people are typing into Google rather than a generic parent blog. Over time, you can increase that generic one too, but it's a really difficult thing to do. And then you're also going to get more generic traffic rather than the traffic you want. So you want to be focused on the blog content. I wouldn't just focus on SEO either. I would be focusing, focusing on how to get into ChatGPT search results as well, because a lot of those bigger brands they don't know how to do that. And so I would be focusing on how to get into generative engines. And by doing that, it's like very similar to SEO but more list-based content, more like frequently asked questions, more conversational language, question and answer style things. Like, that is how I would be focusing on things, and I wouldn't be focusing on a generic big like parenting blog Australia.

Audience member46:53
Right, right. So if I—

Anaita46:56
just to summarise what you said, um, do you mean like focus on the, the top viewed articles, or— no, I mean, um, you have to figure out what your— what the target market is actually Googling rather than Parenting Blog Australia. So say for example you've written a blog on the best 3 kids' backpacks or something, right? You've got to find out what people are typing into Google to get to that blog post. That blog post is what I want you to rank for number 1 or 2 for that keyword phrase, and I don't want you to go too generic with it. When you type that in and then you go down to related searches in Google and it tells you other things people are searching for in that topic, writing blog posts on that so that you become the authority in that that specific topic for kids and parents. Sure, sure.

Audience member47:49
Got you now.

Anaita47:50
Yeah, awesome.

Kirsten Scott47:51
Thank you. Thank you. Um, Krish, hi.

Audience member47:57
Hi. Hi Anita.

Kirsten Scott47:58
Hi.

Anaita48:00
Um, thank you so much for everything you've shared. Um, so my business, I know you know, Lunair, refillable soy candles. Um, I'm currently redoing the website for an upcoming launch, and my question is around what would you say to prioritize? Um, because I've got lots of plugins to optimise the site like, you know, chat support. I'm going to put once the card again, seal subscriptions, like all of those. Um, but it's clearly slowed down the site a lot. So what would you say to prioritize? I mean, um, of course I would love to do a custom-built site, but that's in the plans for the future, not right now. Um, so yeah, any suggestions? Yeah, first of all, you don't need a custom-built site. Don't do it right now. Don't even think about it. Um, we have been using our free Shopify theme for Hero Packaging for nearly 8 years, and it's doing just fine. So, you know, when people talk about custom build and this and that and whatever, you don't need to spend so much. Your site will convert high if the elements on the site are good. My priority in terms of like plugins and stuff, there are things that you absolutely need. So like I've, you know, I talk about Tolstoy a lot. So Tolstoy is for me really good because on a collections page, you know, for you, right? You sell candles and people can't see what a candle smells like or like like they can't picture it. And I know you explain it really well in your content. That content needs to come out on your website more. So like really understanding, I think you've released one called like, what is it, Blue Mountains or something? I can't remember. But it's like, how can you get people to understand that this is the smell that they are after? And so really guiding people to what they want, whether that's a quiz, whether that is having more videos on site. I would say the Monster Card is really good. There's another one as well. That came up to me at Online Retailer, and she's taking so— like, she's doing really well. I believe it's called Unicorn Cart too. I haven't tested it, but that's another one that we can all test. And using, like, really just thinking about getting people to checkout. That's what I want for you. That's probably what I would say because your SKU count is so low. I would say forgetting about the homepage completely. And focusing on the product page because you need to convince people that the smell of your candles and the fact that the sustainability angle is so strong is worth purchasing for. So how can you optimise the product page? It's going to be the video content, it's going to be the social proof. Um, and then another thing I would do is when you are post-purchase, so once they've placed the order as well, a couple of things that I would do there is one, have a post-purchase form or post-purchase survey to ask them what made them buy from you. That's something that I think is really important. And then another thing is to have an upsell app installed post-purchase too. So I think AfterSell or one of those ones. I think that for your product specifically, having an upsell or a cross-sell after purchase, you know, purchase within the next 5 minutes and you get the next, like the same candle or a different candle, 50% off or whatever, is going to increase your average order value. So they're already there, you may as well do that. I think that's probably what my priorities would be. Awesome, thank you so much.

Audience member51:19
Thank you.

Kirsten Scott51:20
Oh, that was amazing. Um, Rachel.

Anaita51:25
Hey Anita, it's so good to see you.

Audience member51:27
Hi.

Anaita51:28
My product Anita knows, um, Harlow Hairiwear dog perfume and luxury grooming products. Um, I don't know how to articulate my question properly. Um, with the conversion rate breakdown, um, what are sort of the metric— like, if ours is like add to cart 6.66, reach checkout 4.85, completed is like 2.9— like, what are the healthy rates that you recommend for each of those metrics? Well, first of all, that's awesome. Um, that's— I think that, that those ones are really amazing. I think it's different for every brand, to be honest with you, because it, it has to be based on the product that you sell and then also your normal average order value, also the shipping rates. Like, there's so much that goes into it. And I think there are benchmarks for, like, general benchmarks. I don't think they can be used because everyone's business is so different. So one of my friends has a furniture brand and her average order value is $1,500, right? So the abandoned cart is so enormous but she gets so much more revenue for each conversion, and it's a longer lead time. So she actually analyses it, that abandoned cart, over a period of time, and do they come back over 14 days, whereas we are looking at it within a day or two. So it doesn't make sense. I think what you've got is actually really good. Um, the average e-commerce conversion rate is like 1.1%, right? So Okay, yeah, it is exceptionally low and it is dropping. The more and more brands that get into the market, the more the competitive space is happening. Like, for every single industry, that conversion rate is getting lower and lower and lower. Um, and so you having a 2.9% conversion rate is fantastic. I, I think it's something that I would analyse for you. The drop-off between cart and, um, checkout of about 2%, that's something that I would look at and see if you can have a quick win there. Like why are people dropping off, that will automatically, that will increase your conversion rate anyway.

Kirsten Scott53:36
Yeah, amazing.

Anaita53:37
Thank you. And a really quick question on the page speed thing. When I look at that, there's like an overview of Core Web Vitals assessment and it's got those under 2-second metrics. But then when I scroll down to diagnose performance issues and the performance, the 2 metrics you said to look at are way high. Like, is it the performance specifically or is it the overall? The overall is they've just given you an overall and that's a really good indication of where you should be sitting. Like, I think the percentage is what you can look at, but those two metrics are really important because it really shows what the behaviour will be of the customers as soon as they get to the site. That is actually more of a behavioural metric rather than overall, like, is this working together? Is the JavaScript there? La la la la la. That's taking into account everything. And as a percentage, that's okay. That's a good thing to look at to improve with that. But for me, if I'm looking at specific things, I need to know what the first thing is that loads, the last thing that loads, can I make them quicker? Having anything like, you know, even the last contentful pain of having that over 5 seconds is just too long. So I would focus on bringing that down.

Kirsten Scott54:45
Amazing.

Audience member54:46
You're amazing. Thank you so much.

Anaita54:47
Thank you, guys.

Kirsten Scott54:49
We have time for one more question. Um, Monica, do you want to ask yours?

Audience member54:55
Hi everyone. Hi Anita. Hi. Um, my question— so my business, sorry, is Romancy Games. I've spoken you before, but basically I make a couple spicy games so that you can recreate the spice from your favourite books with your partner. Um, and my question was about any tips specifically for how to optimise when you only have one product.

Anaita55:15
Oh yeah, um, when you have one product, it's like, it's actually a dream. Um, but first of all, love that idea of business too. You know I love that, I think it's amazing. When you are optimising for one product, it makes the call to action so much easier, right? Like, I would look at other businesses in the US that only have one product. Like, I gave you the example of Jolie Skincare, which is one product. I would say though that I would like you to add on a subscription product to that one product. So a lot of one-product businesses, what they do is they sell the product, but in order to increase your lifetime value, they have this subscription. So that shower head sells you filters every month or every year to replace, right? And that just goes through, but you need them. They tell you that you need them when you buy it.

Kirsten Scott56:12
So you're—

Anaita56:12
they're constantly making money off of you and they haven't needed to do anything extra for you. I wonder if that's something that you can do where it's like you have your main product and then you could potentially have another smaller thing that is like an update to the game, you know, like every quarter or something like that, as incremental.

Audience member56:31
Planning on doing expansion packs like in the future.

Anaita56:33
Yes. Um, in terms of optimising the site, it's going to be like convincing people to buy that one thing. You have one product page to convince people. Another brand that does this, and it's really interesting— I don't think you need to do this, but it's just an option for for you is a brand in America called AG1. They also do like this drink, like a longevity drink, and it's super popular. Um, and they take you straight from, uh, homepage. It's buy that product. They've only got one, so you buy that product and it takes you straight to checkout. And checkout has all the like information, the social proof and everything. They kind of bypass the add to cart because the add to cart, you can't like upsell them on anything. Um, you can't like give them any extra benefits of having a progress bar, like nothing like that. So they go straight from product to cheque out and then they make the purchase. So have a look at other brands. Like, I think there's— it's a really cool thing that you have one product. I wonder that product page, like, all the stuff you can do in it. Like, if people are playing the game and like, they're almost like a before and after, but like a transformation of people playing the game. There's just so much you can do with one product. Um, but my best advice would be to look at other brands with one product and see how they do it.

Kirsten Scott57:47
Amazing.

Anaita57:48
Thank you so much, Anita.

Kirsten Scott57:50
Awesome. Now guys, two things. If you loved this session, we would love for you when we do a post after it to comment and let us know what you thought. Anita's next session is next Wednesday. It's all on content offers and systems that drive daily sales. So if you love today, you can only imagine how good next week's is going to be. And one thing I would ask, if you can pop on your cameras, I'd love to take a little photo on the camera. It's our first premium event and we're so grateful that you guys are all here. So if you're ready, and don't worry, we're all looking fabulous today.

Audience member58:23
So wave!

Kirsten Scott58:25
Thanks guys. All right, we'll see you all next week. Have a great day. Bye!