You're simply educating the user on why this product exists, to whom is it for and what problem is it going to solve. I've had a couple clients who came to us who had things like lifetime warranties. You are literally subsidizing a lifetime warranty. Literally 10% of your users knew about it written, not even iconography. So it's like, use the power of visual iconography and talk about whatever that is. It can also be things that you're proud of as an example. Right. So I've got a number of, like, really fast growing clients that are female founded and there's, and as they should be super proud, they put female that. Great. Put that right on there. Absolutely right. You don't have to worry about what the, the value prop icons just highlight what you are proud of about the product.

Welcome back to a new episode of Chew on CRO, where we break down what's going on in the CRO world so you don't have to. Ned, what are we getting into today?

Let's do some case studies. Let's do it right. Let's talk about a couple things. Some of these are going to be. I want to kind of dip our audience toes in here first, just gently to get through some very basic ones. You know, over a couple episodes, we'll get into some very complex tests, too. The more complex, the more specific it is to the brand. So I want to avoid some of the really complex ones at first year because what I don't want people to do is say, oh, that was really neat. Let's go do it. It's like, whoa, you got to do a lot of data analysis to make sure your brand is primed for something like that. Right. Because it's going to vary dramatically based on, not the least of which, what you're selling, but also your AOV band. And of course, the big one is your consumer archetype. Right. But let's talk about a couple that are, generally speaking, highly applicable to a lot of different brands. Right. So the first is, let's talk about landing event, predominantly mobile. The vast, vast majority of brands are all mobile centric these days. Right.

And that's just consumer behavior. We all know that. So what do users do? Right. One thing I talk about a lot is, over the last about two ish years, just personally and independently, internally within the agency, I've done a lot of studying of what brand new user behavior looks like agnostic to brand across. I think I did 100 brands, including this. It was about ten to 12 million users. And so what I found is there's some very consistent things that new users do and do not do that are a little surprising. There's a bunch. Let's talk about one of them. The vast majority of new users on a site. When I say new users, I mean, first time coming to your website, they will go to the hamburger menu to start their session, right? A lot of times we put disproportionate amount of effort and attention into the hero banner and the color of the CTA on the hero banner in the below the fold and all this stuff there. Users land and just beeline it, right, for that hamburger menu. And they will determine, obviously, where they're going to navigate. But what I found is a lot of the site abandonment rate happened when people had the hamburger menu triggered open, which says what they're judging the entire future experience based on what they see in that hamburger menu.

So I'm basically trying to say hamburger menus are really friggin important, right? And they've frankly been quite archaic. Like, they haven't really evolved much since mobile centricity became like a prominent thing 1213 ish years ago, really, with the advent of the smartphone and getting into actually using mobile devices for e commerce. So with that being said, just not the least of which, we have to spend a lot of time and attention on our hamburger menu. One of the tactics that we've deployed, and we have a ton of clients that we've done this with, and it's been one of the biggest disproportionate wins that we've had, is getting into mobile visual carousel navigation. In that case, what I mean is, as an example, you can see on the screen, I do have this highly redacted, just so everybody knows, because I can't show the specific, because I'm about to show you intimate data. So I can't show you the specific brand that this is. However, you understand that, like, in addition to having this hamburger menu, you've got some of these visual cues that live below that navigation. That works for a myriad of different reasons, right?

Not the least of which is it reduces clicks. As you know, there's always an inverse relationship in the number of clicks in any digital funnel and the conversion rate of that funnel. So you're always trying to shave clicks wherever you can. Hamburger menus are super high. Click right. I had one brand I audited last week. It took seven clicks from the landing event going via the hamburger menu to see a product. So you had to click to open the hamburger, then click to get into shop, then click to go into macro collection, then click to go male versus female, then click to go into sub collection, and then click to go into. It was just like, it's just like, whoa. You know what I mean? And I understand the logic tree and the hierarchy of decision making there, but that is inversely related to, generally speaking, user experience and conversion data on doing the one thing we care about at this step, which is just getting someone into a product experience. That's all we care about. Now, obviously if it's a landing page, a little bit different, but in this case, we're just trying to get them off the homepage and into a shopping experience, right?

So generally by reducing click path, you're going to see benefits there. Kind of the big obvious benefit to this too is it's visual, right? So I mean, imagine that you immediately land in your fashion brand notorious, right? And you see the different visual. Immediately you can start to answer the fundamental question you have as a user, which is, is this for me? Can I see myself wearing it? We all have different styles that we like and dislike. It's highly subjective and so you can immediately make some of those decisions. You can also understand the breadth of products. Oh, they have this, they have that. Oh, they don't just have tees, they got denim too. Oh, okay, got it. So you immediately can get this visual understanding. People also hate reading. They're notoriously new. Users, are notoriously lazy. They will not read. So all those big content blocks that you have to introduce a product, you could pretty much assume most won't even read it. So again, just kind of going to the old ethos, like visual tends to do better. And lastly, it's like a really ergonomic feature. I mean, you see this on a bunch of I'm actually reading, in which case, you do want to adjust that to maybe 60 seconds.But for pretty much everybody watching here, you want it at 10 seconds and then go have a sobering look at what that engagement time is, it'll probably be again 50 a minute, minute and a half at most. And that's everything. That's like the whole thing. Waiting for pages to load, browsing, entering your info. That's the whole thing. Yeah.Things give you a really good reality check.Yeah.Like the way we believe someone's going to consume our content and copy and our product pages and stuff versus how they're actually.Yeah.And obviously in the middle is what we all just lump up as data. Read your data, know your data. But the truth is, is like the people are just, everyone is consuming information and interacting and engaging in a completely different manner than what I think was even, like I said, like just two, three, four years ago.Yeah, yeah. Faster, more mobile.Yeah.A lot more competition. Amazon's not going anywhere. We all know that. So. And then just constant bombardment with ads and buy this, not that, et cetera. I mean, it's classic stuff, right? I mean, you got very little time to win their attention.Blame, tick tock.Yeah. I mean, it's just, yeah, the nature of it is just non stop feeding.You just want more and more entertainment.At the end of the day, you know, and so, but, yeah, I mean, in a world that's always, you know, right now talking about, you know, AI and all the crazy advancements that are going on, I am still, not that we don't execute on something that we do, but I'm still a big believer of like, you know, the basic tenets and first principles and going back to core understandings of behavioral psych will more often than not be your winning ticket, you know, and at minimum, just do it, please, so that you can tick those boxes and just say that you've ticked those boxes right. Find a stranger, give them your site, give them 20 seconds and have them sell the product back to you. And if they miss it, like, you'll get real sobering feedback, you know what I mean? Of course.So I know we went through a few examples of different tests that you ran for different clients. Is there anything specific that you want viewers and listeners to kind of take back and maybe test right away?Yeah. Yeah. The first would be taking your keen look at your navigation. It is disproportionately impactful on your site than you may realize. That's number one. Number two would be understand that, yes, there are some best practices that exist out there, but it's going to be highly deterministic based on who you are in terms of what you sell, who your consumer archetype is, your AOV Bandhead, things of that nature. And the last one to kind of take home and to really chew on is go back to first principles, understand the basic tenets of behavioral psychology, and ask hard questions of yourself. Right? Which is, am I even selling my value propositions here? Chew on that.Chew on that.If you want more from us, follow us on Twitter, follow us on Instagram, follow us on TikTok, and check out the website. Chew on this. IO.

I'm actually reading, in which case, you do want to adjust that to maybe 60 seconds.

But for pretty much everybody watching here, you want it at 10 seconds and then go have a sobering look at what that engagement time is, it'll probably be again 50 a minute, minute and a half at most. And that's everything. That's like the whole thing. Waiting for pages to load, browsing, entering your info. That's the whole thing. Yeah.

Things give you a really good reality check.

Yeah.

Like the way we believe someone's going to consume our content and copy and our product pages and stuff versus how they're actually.

Yeah.

And obviously in the middle is what we all just lump up as data. Read your data, know your data. But the truth is, is like the people are just, everyone is consuming information and interacting and engaging in a completely different manner than what I think was even, like I said, like just two, three, four years ago.

Yeah, yeah. Faster, more mobile.

Yeah.

A lot more competition. Amazon's not going anywhere. We all know that. So. And then just constant bombardment with ads and buy this, not that, et cetera. I mean, it's classic stuff, right? I mean, you got very little time to win their attention.

Blame, tick tock.

Yeah. I mean, it's just, yeah, the nature of it is just non stop feeding.

You just want more and more entertainment.

At the end of the day, you know, and so, but, yeah, I mean, in a world that's always, you know, right now talking about, you know, AI and all the crazy advancements that are going on, I am still, not that we don't execute on something that we do, but I'm still a big believer of like, you know, the basic tenets and first principles and going back to core understandings of behavioral psych will more often than not be your winning ticket, you know, and at minimum, just do it, please, so that you can tick those boxes and just say that you've ticked those boxes right. Find a stranger, give them your site, give them 20 seconds and have them sell the product back to you. And if they miss it, like, you'll get real sobering feedback, you know what I mean? Of course.

So I know we went through a few examples of different tests that you ran for different clients. Is there anything specific that you want viewers and listeners to kind of take back and maybe test right away?

Yeah. Yeah. The first would be taking your keen look at your navigation. It is disproportionately impactful on your site than you may realize. That's number one. Number two would be understand that, yes, there are some best practices that exist out there, but it's going to be highly deterministic based on who you are in terms of what you sell, who your consumer archetype is, your AOV Bandhead, things of that nature. And the last one to kind of take home and to really chew on is go back to first principles, understand the basic tenets of behavioral psychology, and ask hard questions of yourself. Right? Which is, am I even selling my value propositions here? Chew on that.

Chew on that.

If you want more from us, follow us on Twitter, follow us on Instagram, follow us on TikTok, and check out the website. Chew on this. IO.