A Guaranteed Way to 5X Your Ecommerce Results with Matt and Ben Dandurand

00:00 Andy Splichal Welcome to the Make Each Click Count Podcast. This is your host, Andy Splichal. We are happy to welcome this week's guests to discuss today's topic, which is a guaranteed way to 5X your e-commerce results. Today's guests are from Media Contour. Media Contour is a conversion optimization company, so confident about their service that they offer a 5X guarantee on your investment or you don't pay. A big welcome to Matt and Ben Dandaren. Hi guys.

Matt and Ben Dandurand Hey, thanks Andy. Thanks for having us.

Andy Splichal You know, we're excited to have you on here. This year, I've really been concentrating on having quite a few conversion optimization companies on to talk about how you can improve your conversion on your website, but no other company has had such a guarantee. So I'm curious, how long have you been offering this guarantee and why at 5X?

00:57 Matt and Ben Dandurand Great question. You know, we've only been offering the guarantee for a few months, so we're still getting a feel for how people are responding to it, whether they think it's real or too good to be true. You know, and we offer the guarantee for a couple reasons, but mainly to transfer the risk from our clients back to us, you know, improve our worth that we can make them significantly more money. You know, we know how stressful it is and risky it is to hire a new agency. And so, you know, there's millions of options out there. A lot of people have been burned before, so we want it to be a risk-free decision, emotionally and financially for our clients. The 5X on ROI, you know, is a balance between what would be just scary enough to motivate us and really excite our potential clients.

01:36 Andy Splichal Now, what, I mean, 5X, it seemed a number, but what is that number? I mean, what's an average return that you find with your clients? Is it around 5X? Is it more? Is it, I mean, how does it just depend?

01:54 Matt and Ben Dandurand Right, so it depends a lot on what their existing traffic and revenue are. Five is our minimum. You know, five is what we consider the bare minimum to charge for our results. Typically, we're exceeding that significantly. But five enough was good enough, seemed, you know, exciting enough for someone to be interested and attainable for us at the same time. Obviously, we're shooting for the moon.

02:18 Andy Splichal Sure, sure. Now, what, when you first start working with a company, what are some common mistakes that you typically can identify right away that might be negatively affecting conversion?

02:35 Matt and Ben Dandurand Well, Andy, that's an easy one. I would say that's gonna be lack of testing. So we find that people make changes to their website without testing first. And the problem with that is that there are issues that may not show up until you've gone a few round of changes. And by then you have zero clue what actually caused the issue. Now, sometimes you get lucky and that's obvious, but more often than not, it's a collection of those untested changes compounding over time. So, you know, another thing to note about A-B testing, in a lot of cases, teams will tell us that they are A-B testing. And then we come to find out that they think that, you know, A is before the launch and B is after the launch. And you just measure the difference between the two. But really that just looks at revenue and doesn't measure, you know, what actually is making the difference.

03:30 Andy Splichal So where do you start testing? I mean, where do you even begin?

03:32 Matt and Ben Dandurand Ben, you wanna take that? Yeah. You know, typically we try not to walk into a project and make assumptions about what changes are gonna have the biggest impact. We typically have an idea based on, you know, our experience, you know, what changes typically work well for most companies. But really we start a project by, you know, launching advanced audience intelligence and figuring out exactly what people are looking for, what wants, needs and emotions they're experiencing when they get to the site, what their expectations are. And then we start making changes based on what that data is telling us, you know, and then we test it, you know, to make sure that those changes do in fact result in positive results. And we can pinpoint exactly what changes were effective, what changes may be harming a site. And so, you know, that's kind of the roundabout answer. Typically we'll start by trying to focus on an exact problem on the site and we do that with a conversion funnel analysis. And so we'll see where on the site people are saying, not interested and where all the drop-off points are. And then we can focus our efforts on those specific pages or groups of pages or categories.

04:49 Andy Splichal Interesting. So analytics is super important for when you start.

04:57 Matt and Ben Dandurand Absolutely. So there's, you know, we've got qualitative analytics that really power CRO, but we also, you know, dive into the quantitative analytics too. We'll look at people's GA4 accounts, you know, to help inform that conversion funnel analysis too.

05:08 Andy Splichal Now GA4, is everybody using it already or do you find that, I mean, where somebody comes in, or do they have analytics properly installed? It seems like, you know, that's always a struggle with clients when they come to me. Right. And their PPC is they're not using analytics or not using it properly.

05:32 Matt and Ben Dandurand Yeah, I think everyone's probably using it, but not properly. They're not setting up and getting reports that are actually valuable to their company. They don't have the time to do that. So I think that's a good point. They're actually valuable to their company. They don't have a transfer conversion set up correctly. You know, we don't go in and revamp people's GA4 analytics accounts. We'll set it up to help for our own purposes and help to set them up to see what information is valuable. I think everyone's using it because it's pretty, you know, it's the cheapest analytics tool out there.

06:01 Andy Splichal So, right. So where do you go? I mean, if it's not properly set up, I mean, where do you go with trying to start tests to help people optimize?

06:06 SPEAKER_01 Luckily, we have our own tools where we can do a conversion funnel analysis. And so if GA4 is just a complete mess, you know, we're not going to go in there and clean it up necessarily. You know, we can help tell clients what information is the most valuable to us, but we have our own tools that we can set up on their site to start gathering the information we need to find out where those drop off points are.

06:32 Andy Splichal So for the established online store, how much resources do you think that they should be putting toward increasing their conversion versus customer acquisition?

06:46 Matt and Ben Dandurand Right. That's a good question. You know, as a rule of thumb, it's probably 80% acquisition, 20% conversions. You know, I think most online stores, the majority of them, the majority of their budget is going to go to acquisition just because investing in acquisition is more expensive in general. And at the end of the day, businesses need customers to survive. There's a statistic that still blows my mind, but Jeff Bezos told Forbes that he invested 100 times more in customer experience than in advertising in Amazon's first year of business. And I just think that that really drives on the point of how important improving your customer experience is to long term growth. You know, for example, let's say you've got, you know, a $10,000 monthly ad spend that's generating $20,000, and you've got a 1% conversion rate. You take 3,000 of that, put it towards CRO, and increase your conversions to 2%. You've got a 7… But now you've got $7,000 in ad spend generating $28,000 a month. So it doesn't have to be financially, you know, as impactful as advertising, but the results, you know, are profound.

07:48 Andy Splichal Yeah, I mean, those are great to look at the numbers that way, but in reality, how big do you find companies before they really think about CRO?

08:10 Matt and Ben Dandurand I think everyone's heard about it on some level, regardless of size. You know, for it to be really effective, you have to be a little bit more established because you need that traffic. You need an audience. You need traffic in order to generate audience insights. We typically see more mid-market companies taking it really seriously, either considering investing in their own tools or bringing on an agency, I would say. Enterprise-level platforms are expensive, and so, you know, in order to avoid paying those costs and signing up for long-term contracts, people want to bring in an outside agency to help avoid those costs. It can be a lot cheaper just to bring in an agency.

09:04 Andy Splichal And so how big, how much revenue usually before they start? Really come into an agency?

Matt and Ben Dandurand You know, I would say once they hit the $5 million mark, it's probably when they start reaching out. I mean, we see it sooner too.

Andy Splichal Sure. Now, what about, does it matter, your platform, especially for e-commerce stores? And I guess I'm curious, if you were starting an e-commerce store, what platform would you use?

09:22 Matt and Ben Dandurand Right, probably Shopify. You know, there are certain aspects of all the platforms that we really like and really dislike. They all have their pros and cons. I think we really like the analytics that Shopify provides and being who we are, we feed on those kinds of things. And I think Shopify provides the most versatility in terms of apps and themes and templates and things you can add on. A lot of things, you know, play ball with Shopify, I would say.

09:48 Andy Splichal Now, the next question is really important because it goes right into your 5X guarantee, but how do you calculate ROI with conversion rate optimization?

10:01 Matt and Ben Dandurand Right, so the short answer is our changes will generate five times more revenue than what our services cost. It's calculated by our split testing software, which is going to connect, you know, directly to your e-comm platform like Shopify or VU. It's going to measure your current sales numbers. So when we do our final split testing, we test half the traffic between the original and half between our optimized version. The software will measure the revenue going to the original and to the optimized version. And then we'll compare that, you know, over a 12-month period. So it's an annualized return on investment. Now, the important piece of this is that the software is going to tell us when the test has a conclusive, statistically significant result in order for the test to be successful and prevent any false positives. So you'll know that those changes, you know, will last once they're implemented. You know, at the end of the day, it's usually pretty obvious when sales jump as well.

10:56 Andy Splichal What is that level? Where does the test need to be statistically relevant?

11:00 Matt and Ben Dandurand So the minimum got, so we use VWO as our testing platform, which is an enterprise-level testing platform. The minimum, they say, that an A-B test needs to be statistically significant is it has to have 1,500 visitors to both versions of the original and the variation. Each one has to have 25 conversions on it, and it needs to run for two weeks. Now, you can hit those numbers a lot faster than two weeks. You know, most sites will hit those numbers in a day. We'd still like to, you know, run a test for at least a week to make sure that that power, that statistical significance is hit and firm.

11:36 Andy Splichal Now, what are, because you had mentioned there's a lot of competitors, but I guess if you were shopping yourself for a conversion rate optimization, what are important questions to ask an agency?

11:50 Matt and Ben Dandurand Well, I'd say the obvious one is do you offer a guarantee? You know, my guess is that the agencies, because none of them offer it, they're gonna try and flip that question on its head and say that anyone offering a guarantee is selling snake oil or you can't guarantee results, but in fact, you can, and we do. So I would start there. Another one is, you know, decide how involved you want the agency to be with your company. So most CRO companies, they wanna get deeply involved and change your company culture, put you on a retainer for a year, even two years in some cases, and that's fantastic. And you know, our heroes, the conversion rate experts, actually do that and it's, you know, changing for that company, but it's definitely an enterprise model and very, very expensive. You know, only companies at certain levels can do that. So, you know, I'd ask them about their process, their minimum commitment, how long it takes them to get your results, things like that. And then, you know, we're also skeptical when we see other agencies offering conversions right away. I think people say they do CRO and they offer quick results, but it's not real CRO. You know, they're not doing the same audience intelligence and the depth of audience intelligence if they're doing, you know, quick turnarounds that usually involve, you know, ad spend. And then, oh, go ahead.

13:22 Andy Splichal No, I was just thinking, so are you guys, are you working with e-commerce companies or for professional services or both, or where do you guys, where are you guys going?

13:30 Matt and Ben Dandurand E-comm specifically. Yeah, so we focus more on websites and E-comm specifically.

13:34 Andy Splichal So my next question is, I mean, everything is just flipped on its head since COVID and we just saw a huge acceleration in the last two years, but where do you see e-comm going over the next year to 18 months?

13:49 Matt and Ben Dandurand I think the thing we're probably most excited about is Google's new AI search feature that they just announced this past Tuesday at their marketing live event. They're trying to encourage people to use longer term queries like, you know, what's the best bike for a five mile commute with Hills instead of just best computer bike. And so Google's AI will return more specific bikes based on reviews, user-generating content, et cetera, but that's gonna effectively push down the search results we're used to seeing. So I think the initial reaction is probably, you know, shock and fear, but we've got to remember that Google isn't gonna jeopardize, you know, what's going on and destroy their ad revenue. Their goal is to basically just increase the user experience, which aligns with what we preach. You know, it's gonna be increasingly important to have a deep understanding exactly of who your audience is, you know, why they use your products and what they use them for, then reflect that in your messaging and marketing strategy. You know, I also think we'll see a lot of companies take a deep dive into their ad spend. You know, COVID was pretty good, you know, in the most part for a lot of online retailers, but now they're seeing their conversions drop, you know, their ad spend isn't getting them what it used to. So I think we'll start seeing companies looking for ways to still grow, but go about it more efficiently, you know, and CRO becomes a great strategy for this.

15:08 Andy Splichal And you guys are brothers, right? Correct, yeah. What's it like working with your brother?

15:20 Matt and Ben Dandurand It is great, yeah.

Andy Splichal And how long have you been running Media Contour?

Matt and Ben Dandurand Media Contour has been around since 2005. So I started myself, went to a full-blown ad agency, and at some point we realized we wanted to specialize in CRO.

15:38 Andy Splichal And during this journey, have there been any business books that have inspired you to grow in your company?

15:45 Matt and Ben Dandurand Yeah, a lot of books in general, I would say, but probably the best CRO book we found is a book called Making Websites Win, and it's by our personal heroes, you know, who we consider the best in the business, the guys at Conversion Rate Experts. You know, they offer a lot bigger service than we do, and so we're kind of targeting a different market, but they've inspired a lot of what we do. Good to Great, you know, goes back into improving, creating a customer-centric company, and it's great, kind of ties in with conversion rate optimization. Don't Make Me Think is another great CRO book and user experience book. Really, anything by Chip and Dan Heath, Mackenzie Mine, Mind of a Strategist, Join or Die, those are books we kind of consider dogma.

16:30 Andy Splichal And so what services are you offering clients?

Matt and Ben Dandurand Well, Andy, you know, as I mentioned, we were a full-service agency, but we do just CRO now. Okay. That's because we found it's the most underutilized and advantageous thing an e-commerce company can do right now.

16:53 Andy Splichal Okay, and do you have a favorite success story you could share?

16:58 Matt and Ben Dandurand Yeah, our favorite, you know, stories are obviously when we're able to provide just, you know, an absurd return on investment for our clients, like 40 or 50 X. We helped an e-commerce fitness manufacturer, had amazing products, customers loved them. They've been struggling with conversion rates and had an amazing agency, who we deeply respect, helping them with their digital marketing, but nothing is moving the needle. And so we came in, you know, with our methodology, we're able to increase conversions by 17%, add to carts by 47%, and after two weeks of A-B testing, showed an annualized revenue increase of 1.35 million. Now we were able to do all of that because we didn't boil the ocean. You know, we utilized our conversion funnel analysis to identify exactly where the problem was, onsite behavior analysis, confirm those assumptions, and then our A-B test proved the results. So yeah, that's one we're proud of for sure.

17:50 Andy Splichal Now, is there any time that you ever struggle with getting results for a client?

17:57 Matt and Ben Dandurand Yeah, you know, not necessarily with our methods or anything, but buy-in is typically the biggest challenge. You know, with efforts like CRO, you really need someone high up in the company to help champion our work and our efforts and get everyone's buy-in. Otherwise, getting things implemented and approved in the time of the meter can be a huge challenge. You know, the success of our efforts is usually directly correlated to buy-in, more so than anything in particular about a company's business or product or websites. And who is the perfect client for working with you guys? You know, our ideal is an e-commerce company, probably with around 50,000 monthly visitors, you know, revenue of around 5 million, dedicated ad budget, and they're dedicated to creating a more customer-centric approach to their website to increase their conversion rate. You know, our minimum requirements are at least 10,000 monthly visitors and revenue of around 500,000 online revenue, around 500,000. But we want our clients to be as passionate as we are because we get way better results. So if you've got the passion, you know, we can work with you.

19:03 Andy Splichal And what about conversion rate? I mean, is there, you know, if you're sub 2, you really should think about it, or is it, you know, if you're running at 7, or do you really think that you can improve almost anybody if they've never used a conversion rate optimization company before?

19:20 Matt and Ben Dandurand I think there's always room for improvement. I mean, 7 would be certainly more challenging to improve than 2, but the beauty of what we do is we're getting feedback and testing it, and so you're not going to implement any changes that don't work. Right. Yeah.

19:30 Andy Splichal Cool. Well, how can an interested listener learn more about working with you guys and learn more about your guarantee?

19:46 Matt and Ben Dandurand Yeah, the absolute best way to learn more to get started would be to book a free PDP audit on our site. This is the good kind of audit, not the bad ones that you just kind of went through in April. It's free, you don't have to take your money at the end. This will give you an introduction into how we work, you know, we'll go through what's causing problems on your site, what's likely affecting your conversion rates. And if you want to engage us, it'll already get the ball rolling. If that's way too much for you, we recommend, you know, going to our site as well. We can download a free guide to the high performance product page. That's kind of the baseline of where we start. Make sure all the boxes are checked on sites, make sure information's organized, you know, neatly and easy to understand. There's no clutter. And that's a free guide and that's a great starting place too.

20:34 Andy Splichal And that's a PDF? PDF, correct, yeah. Cool. Well, we will put links to those in the show notes for the episode. Now, this has been great, but is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap it up today?

20:43 Matt and Ben Dandurand No, mostly a major thank you to inviting us. You know, we're letting us ramble on about, you know, talking about things we love, so we really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks, Andy.

20:55 Andy Splichal Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. And like I said, you know, I have not seen anybody offering that kind of guarantee. So I think that's fantastic for listeners. Remember, if you like this episode, please go to Apple Podcasts and leave us an honest review. And if you're looking for more information on media contour or connecting with Matt and Ben, you'll find the links in the show notes below. In addition, if you're looking for more information on growing your business, check out our podcast resource center available at podcast. MakeEachClickCount.com. We have compiled all of our different past guests by show topic and topic and included each of the contact information in case you would like more information in the services I've discussed during previous episodes. Well, that's it for today. Remember to stay safe, keep healthy and happy marketing. And I'll talk to you in the next episode.