CRO: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly With Raphael Paulin-Daigle

Raphael Paulin-Daigle is the Founder and CEO of SplitBase, a conversion optimization and landing page agency helping e-commerce companies increase conversion rates and profit margins. As a digital marketing consultant, Raphael has helped leading brands add millions to their bottom line, including Dr. Squatch, Hyperice, and L’Oréal. He is also the host of the Minds of Ecommerce Podcast, where he interviews e-commerce brand executives on top growth strategies.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Raphael Paulin-Daigle shares his inspiration for founding SplitBase
What purpose does conversion rate optimization (CRO) serve?
The pitfalls of CRO
Trending testing strategies brands should avoid
Which testing methods are worth pursuing?
Why does asking customers qualitative, open-ended questions provide better insight than popular test ideas
What initiated Raphael’s passion for CRO in marketing?
Raphael divulges his experience with Dan Martell and Bitcoin

In this episode…

The ascent of e-commerce requires companies to compile user data to determine effective marketing strategies that resonate with their target audiences. Brands who understand their customer base can anticipate the user journey and control the narrative, leading to an increase in conversion rates. Which strategies can you implement to yield favorable conversion rates?

CRO converts brand consumers into lifetime customers. There are numerous tests brands can implement to increase their conversion rates — some more favorable than others. Platforms like Twitter provide inspiration when assembling CRO tactics, but developing a promising strategy begins with customer research. Raphael Paulin-Daigle refers to this method as conversion research. While other companies prioritize trending test strategies, directly asking customers qualitative questions provides them with an optimal user experience.

On this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris welcomes Raphael Paulin-Daigle, Founder and CEO of SplitBase, to discuss the particulars of CRO and the best strategies for optimal conversion results. Raphael shares the purpose of CRO, which testing strategies to avoid, CRO strategies worth pursuing, and why asking the right questions provides better insights than trending tests.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now, let's get started with the show.

William Harris 0:13

Hey everybody, it's William Harris here, the Founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of this podcast where we'll be featuring experts in the D2C industry showing strategies on how to scale your business and achieve your goals. Today, I'm excited to have Raphael Paulin-Daigle. He is the Founder and CEO of SplitBase, a conversion optimization and landing page agency for D2C e-commerce brands, where he's helped brands like Dr. Squatch, Hyperice, and L'Oreal add millions to their bottom lines. He's also the host of the Minds of Ecommerce Podcast where he interviews founders and executives of top e-commerce brands about their top growth strategies. Raphael, thanks for coming on today.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 0:13

Yeah, thanks for having me. Super excited.

William Harris 0:20

Yeah, we're actually should I say Konichiwa? Because I think you just got back from Japan, right?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 1:00

I did. I did. I'm living off jet lag right now. But I'm happy to be here regardless. And yes, so feeling a little nostalgic from from that trip just landed within 24 hours ago,

William Harris 1:14

I had a Japanese exchange student when I was in, I think it was high school, either either junior high or high school. And there's so many great memories and fond memories for me even just of Japanese culture and the language and everything. So that's really cool. You got to go there.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 1:29

Yeah, it's such a great place. And you know, I keep thinking there has to be so many like great Japanese business opportunities that we could do in North America like that. 711 has like the most amazing like snacks and like fresh sushi and everything. I'm like, why kids are like seven elevens have like you really high quality, you know, like little bowl of rice with salmon or something on top of it. Or something to take advantage of here.

William Harris 1:54

I would not trust the sushi from Oh 711 Here in America. That's a very different thing. Hey, I want to get in we're gonna be talking about the good the bad, the ugly of CRO before we do I want to go into our sponsorship messages. First, real quick to here. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired with the largest one selling for nearly 800 million. And we were ranked as the 12th fastest growing agency in the world by Adweek. You can learn more at our website Elumynt, which is spelled e-l-u-m-y-n-t.com. That said, let's get into the backstory before we dig into CRO, what led you to start SplitBase. What made you say we need an agency that is dedicated towards doing CRO helping brands like this running a B tests? Why?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 2:47

Yeah, great question. Well, you know, it's funny because today, I think a CRO is slowly becoming like PPC, right where it's like there were so many agencies doing it. But until like two years ago, conversion optimization, AB testing landing pages, it was still something that like a lot of people didn't see as like, a need, but mostly something very nice to have. And the conversation is really changing, right? Not that it's ever been not needed. I just think right now for people to realize that it was needed. They needed, you know, maybe a bigger business, it was less talked about it was a little more niche. Anyway, SplitBase started about six or seven years ago. And that's when I was trying to build a bunch of different startups that all failed. And maybe it was either Yeah, I think we'll probably had seven or eight years at this point. You know, when I was kind of trying to figure out what I wanted to do, but I knew that, you know, I've, I love digital marketing, I wanted to really do something in that space. I, you know, tried to build the marketplace to connect marketing experts with brands. So those experts would review the brands websites had no idea what I was doing. And it was so funny, because it was my first you know, experience strength to start, I guess an online service. And although it completely failed, I discovered the various asset the various aspects of digital marketing, lecture conversion optimization, and they learned all about how do you drive traffic? How do you convert your customers, and even though that business didn't work out, I learned that conversion optimization was kind of the one aspect of digital marketing that I really cared about. Like to me that was just so interesting, and I still don't know why. Like I never enjoyed going in you know, Facebook ads or Google ads. never enjoyed that. Sure. I'm never really enjoyed SEO that much. Right? Like I find it interesting. Obviously I know a lot about these things, but like for me to really spend my time in you know, I really love the But of like, figuring out why people are buying what they're not buying and just copy images itself a bit creative. And that's how I kind of got into CRO. And eventually, you know, took maybe a year or two to get a couple clients and eventually, you know, the snowball kinda cap. I mean, that's a bad analogy, but I was gonna say kept going uphill, but we just kept getting bigger. Really? Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, and then SplitBase became an agency eventually.

William Harris 5:31

Yeah, yeah. No, that's great. That's, that's very cool. I mean, I was gonna say, cool that I started say, great. And I didn't say him all the time. And, you know, one of the things that I think that I liked about what you were saying is that a lot of people weren't looking at CRO, as much a couple years ago. And I think a big part of that was because acquisition was very easy. And so it was much more focus was on how do we acquire more customers. And that was probably the right thing to do. Because of the environment that we were in. Maybe acquisition has gotten a little bit more challenging competitors are in the market, things have changed on the ads platforms. And there's a, let's just say a, you know, renaissance of sorts into converting people a little bit better and saying, how do we do a better job of converting that traffic that's coming here and making sure that we're more efficient on that side of things. And I think that there's like a natural and I make sure I go in the right direction, where it's like, hey, go acquisition, and it's like, hey, let's figure out a conversion rate again. Now let's go acquisition to get let's figure out the average again, acquisition, and you have these plateaus, and these ebbs and these flows that are necessary. And I think that that's okay.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 6:33

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, that's the funny part. Right. Like, couple years ago, people were all about optimizing their ads. And now they're like, oh, shit, I guess there's only so much we can do with the ads. There's something that comes after that, as well. So anyways, I'm not complaining, because there's still it's funny, because, you know, you think that there's less education that needs to be done today than before. But the truth is, the education is just different. Were like, two years ago, I had to like, educate and you know, talk about why you need to do CRO, and then today now that like, everybody's offering CRO as an upsell. And there are so many bad, you know, CRO services out there. It's educating on what's the right way of doing CRO or like, you know, what is CRO? Really, because I think even that term is showing a little lost from

William Harris 7:34

time? Well, it ultimately is to make sure that we clarify that for everybody here, you know, conversion rate optimisation, how do you optimize the conversion rate? And if I had to guess where you're going with this, it's like I have, you know, ESPN or something. But it's like you have, you know, how do you how do you convert people, the right people in the right ways, you might find something that converts the wrong people a lot more quickly. That's not beneficial to your business. But let's look at this from more like an LTV perspective. How are we compared to the right people? Right?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 8:08

Yeah, well, that's the thing, like the term CRO is not even the right term anymore, which is kind of like it's the best term we have. If we don't use that. Are people really going to understand what we do? Probably not. So it's kind of hard to steer away from it. But when you think about it, what we do, right is when you do optimization, there's no way to know exactly what's going to work or what's not going to work, even the best practices, you know, that worked really great for a bunch of brands, you'll test it, and it may not work for your site, right? So no one can ethically claim to know exactly what to do to increase your conversions. Now, you can know the process to experiment, you can know the process to how do you improve the quality of the your hypotheses, the quality of ideas to test that is doable, that comes with experience and with a strategy and everything and that's what we do. That's what we do. But ultimately, conversion. CRO really is pretty much a process to you know, how do you get the best hypotheses, and then let's just test different ideas to see what will lead to the best business decision. And you know, sometimes it's not even about conversion rate, sometimes it's about like you said LTV, AOP, sometimes about completely different behaviors that will eventually help with you know, revenue, growth and everything. But ultimately, I always say conversion optimization is a way to help you make better business decisions using data and experimentation. I love that. No need to get too much into that. I don't want to confuse people with that right? Like ultimately, yes, like it is still to make you more money. Like that's why we exist. But I think we need to choose To remove the myth that conversion rate optimization is really only just about conversion rate.

William Harris 10:05

Right? So let's go into the bad and the ugly side of CRO. Let's start there. And then we'll get into like, what are the good examples? But should when you talk about like the bad side of CRO? What does that mean to you? What do you mean by the bad of CRO?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 10:21

I think the bad side of CRO is that, I don't know if I can say that. But I would say the Twitter reification of CRO is sure highly beneficial and highly may be harmful to the industry. And yeah, and yeah, exactly. I'm sure it's true for any industry. I mean, it's true for even I'm sure most political topics, right?

William Harris 10:50

Nuclear Physics probably also not great there, right? There's probably bad discourse on Twitter about absolutely everything. But that's one of the brilliance of just free speech in general is the ability to have open conversations about things and sometimes that can lead to wildly brand new ideas that we would never have thought of before as well. But

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 11:08

well, here's the truth. The truth is marketers ruin everything. And that's exactly what probably ruined, you know, most marketing specialties as well, in a way and that's what's happening to CRO right now. And the thing is, you know, those CRO experts, and, you know, I'm not even excluding myself from that, like, you know, I'm sure sometimes we talked about case studies, and we make sure like our case studies, you know, are very legit. And obviously they're well known brands and we really make sure to explain like how we came up with the ideas and, and why we recommended we give a lot of disclaimers of like even this, even if this work for this brand, it may not work for you. But the truth is, you know, when you oversimplify that? What's happening on Twitter, I would say and that because that's where it's the most obvious is there's just a lot of best practices or like test results being, you know, thrown at people. And there's a lot of people that I don't think they're I think people a lot of people just don't know enough about CRO to know that they shouldn't copy those tests for themselves. Sure. Right. So what's happening is, you know, yeah, I think it gets really easy for people who are not, who doesn't have a deep knowledge of CRO to go and just learn a lot of wrong things about CRO or just to kind of copy what everybody's doing the tests ideas are running, even though that just ends up being a waste of time for them. Sure. And money, oh,

William Harris 12:39

it's a waste of money as well. Oh, absolutely.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 12:40

Like, here's the deal. CRO is expensive. One, it takes time. Like if you need to design right copy, make a change to your site, run the test, wait for the test to finish. Like it's a time investment. It's a monetary investment. So like if you're, if you don't have a solid process for it, if you're not learning from every test that you're running, and you're just kind of running anything that you're seeing work for some random brand on Twitter, the truth is, you're probably going to be losing money on CRO more than, you know, even breaking even or making money off of it. Right? Like it is get to be a like there's a huge sunk cost. If you don't really have a process to make sure that process ends up being profitable for you. Right. That's the way it's a that's kind of the bad part of CRO, it's because it's being labeled as you should be doing CRO but the truth is, well, yeah, but sometimes focus on other things first. you unpack that further, if you aren't, why

William Harris 13:50

do I want to? And you know, I feel like with some of those ideas of the actual costs of CRO like you said, especially being done wrong. And I feel like, you know, my father, I don't think my father, the inventor of the Toaster Strudel would be very happy to hear about this. And so what are some things that if you're going to impact like one or two or three examples that you've seen maybe trending on Twitter or whatever, have tests like this is a bad test that you probably shouldn't run? Yeah. What would those be?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 14:19

Yeah, well, I mean, first, I mean, I don't think I can even name a specific test, but I'll I'll go in categories. Okay. Okay. The first thing is, there's a lot of tests, I mean, or I'm seeing a lot of screenshots where the statistics just don't make any sense. Right? And where, you know, there's a test that was run and then the sample sizes, you know, there's fewer than like 100 conversions per variant and then somebody's like, oh, this test performed great, but maybe it ran two days maybe around a couple days. Maybe there was only like a couple conversions. You know, between the winning there you addition and losing variation. So ultimately, statistics are very often invalid, or they're, you know, you easily get false positives or false negatives, if you're not exactly sure how to run those tests. And I still see it today, a lot of people with like, CRO expert in their bio, and then, you know, CRO agency, and they post a screenshot of those things. And you're like, Yeah, sure. Right. And, yeah, and it's just that the math doesn't make any sense. So I think that is one thing, right? A lot of tests, or a lot of decisions are made based on false positives or false negatives, or just, and I'm not gonna lie, like statistics can be pretty complicated. Absolutely. I have a lot of people on my team who knows him better than I do. Because like, I'm not gonna lie. Like, I've been in this space for six, seven years. I'm so not the person who knows the most about statistics, right? And there are some decisions, I just rather trust my team to do it. Right. So that's probably one

William Harris 16:11

reason about this. So there's two really common things that I've seen show up from a statistics perspective within the ads side as well. One is Bayes theorem ought to link to that in the in the show notes here. Bayes theorem is very interesting phenomenon when it shows up in the outside, and I imagine that it can show up in the, in the CRO side, as well. And the other one is symptoms, Simpsons paradox, which is, you know, really interesting, where, if these are terms you're not familiar with, again, I'll link to them in the show notes. But, you know, Simpsons paradox, it's one of those things where there could be lurking variables. And so you might think that example A is beating out example B. But if you find out one lurking variable in this could be like the audience where you actually dig into it, and you say, oh, but for every age group, when we look at the age group demographics, every age group add, or, you know, option B is outperforming option A, it was just because there was more tests run on option A, that it ended up overall having a better result in aggregate. And so it was just a poorly run test, or poorly, you didn't look at the these lurking variables, these variables that are hidden underneath there, where it's actually outperforming significantly. This shows up all the time. And as I'm sure doesn't CRO and so, again, those but that's where it's statistics are not as simple as it might seem as just running this. And I was just reading the other day, I want to say it was just yesterday on LinkedIn, where somebody had posted about the results that they had from an AA test. And I love that, and I haven't heard about an AA test in a long time. But, you know, when people do that you run literally the exact same thing, it's the same page, it gets the same page, and you can get different results. You know, with AA tests, I think that's kind of one of the things that's really interesting about that idea of there being similar, similar and getting different results, if you don't run it long enough.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 17:56

Yes. I mean, totally. And, you know, we run a test every time we start with a new client, or have to install or change the testing tool on the site, right? And yeah, like how, like, doesn't happen the majority of the time, but it does happen, sometimes we're like, there's a data mismatch, like it makes no sense. And then, you know, you start asking yourself, How many people who, you know, are just installing your testing tool, because it's really easy to set up and to, to, to, you know, just run, but how many people are setting those tools up running their test, but because of a faulty implementation, and just something, you know, that's off, you know, there are data from day one is going to be completely garbled, and they're gonna get false positives and false negatives. And, you know, that could have been avoided with running a test. So a test can help for that. But also back to your point as well, like, you will see it in AA tests, like, how do you interpret the data? Right? There are so many avenues to go around that and if your understanding of statistics is a bit limited when it comes to optimization, you know, you will see that with the AA tests, because, yeah, AA tests can show a lot of things that leads to interesting conversations.

William Harris 19:14

And as with many things, you know, my recommendation not as the CRO expert, but my recommendation as the as the PPC expert, when I'm talking to clients is, if you're small, you don't have a ton of traffic, it maybe doesn't matter, you maybe don't need to run that as an AB test. There's some things that are intuitive, and you just go ahead and go for it. Got it, it's fine. You'll notice that there's a big change because you're taking bigger swings. But the the potential problems that you can run into when you're some of the brands you're working with Dr. Squatch, L'Oreal, I mean, if you decide that you're going to, you know, make a change based on a bad test or bad data, it can have enormous implications to your p&l. And so let's dig into instead. What are some of the good things that people should be looking at from CRO How should they Think about doing CRO correctly, especially if you're already doing 10 million 100 million dollars a year, how to make sure that you're setting this up in a way that's going to benefit you.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 20:10

Totally? Well, I think the first thing is, you know, if you're doing a big 10 million a year, right, like, you got to think of a b testing, not just as a way to see if whatever idea you have is gonna make you more money, you really got to see testing as insurance as an insurance policy. Here's an example. And this is really, really hard, by the way for most brands to grasp, until they actually experience it. So whoever's listening to this, I know it will sound logical, will you actually, you know, do it, it depends. Until the experience, I think this is one of those things, you have to experience it to really understand it. But you know, very often, right? Whether we're marketers, or we're, you know, e-commerce founders, you know, a brand will come up with this idea of, hey, let's do this PDP redesign, right, or let's redesign this section of the site. Let's redo navigation, it feels complicated, we're getting complaints about it. So the redesign it, it looks so much better, it makes so much more sense on paper, like there's like, every reason in the world points to this new version of the PDP or to navbar, to probably being better than what's currently on site. Sure. But the truth is that very, very, very often, that first version isn't going to be performing better. And the thing is, if it's not performing better, it doesn't mean that it's just gonna stay flat, like it could also perform much, much worse. And when you're doing more than 10 million a year, that could mean a lot of money. Yeah, I'm actually one of those brands that you mentioned, that was in my bio, and I'm not gonna say which one but and it probably happened with all the brands you mentioned, for the record, but I can think of one example specifically, where like, they redesigned their PDP. It was like night and day, it looks so sexy, it was actually based on usability principles, it was even based on the data, we found that, you know, that pointed to what matters to customers. And it was his great PDP redesign. Now, they were we had, we had been working together for a couple years now. So they knew better than just to release it. And they were like, well, let's test it. And they tested it. And lo and behold, it massively underperformed. Interesting. And releasing, it would have cost the millions per year. Yeah. So obviously, politically, then on their end, they were you know, obviously, like, you know, like, they really wanted to have their new design pushed out quickly. Like, it's, it kind of sucks. And then those are the danger zones for brand, because then like, you kind of know that it might cost you millions, but you don't really feel it because it hasn't happened. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yep. And then you have that new design that looks so much sexier that matches with like, what the CEO on sure what everybody wants for the brand to look like. So this is dangerous zone where some brands might go for the option that will end up costing them a lot of money, just because they'll they didn't really connect the dots between logic and emotion. Sure. Now, in this case, they did not deploy it. We did a lot of changes, and we tested it for for a little while and eventually got to a version that performed much better than what was there originally. Right. So there is always light at the end of the tunnel if you follow a good process for it. But I would say that that's dangerous.

William Harris 23:58

So what's a good test to run? If you are going to bring somebody on generally speaking, right? It's like this is different for every single website. But if there's, you know, a test, or two or three that you feel like every brand needs to run, it's the kind of the kind of test that pulls people in as shoppers. It's like getting losers or going shopping, right? It's like what are those types of tests?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 24:22

Yeah, so I would steer away. Let's start with that from any test that changes the layout of the website. Or even just changes the copy like we don't know enough to just recommend that right away. Right. What I would say for every brand that doesn't take advantage of bundles upsells cross sells dip Yeah, bundles or subscriptions, you know, things like that. That's one area we love to start with. Should you implement it? versus testing it. Yeah. Like, actually, most of the time, she can implement, you know, an upsell, and it's probably going to perform better than if you didn't have it, you're probably going to make more money. And there could be an impact on conversion rate. That's why you still want to test it if you're pretty sizable. But the thing is, there's also many ways of doing upsells. There are many ways of doing cross sells, there's many ways of doing bundles. So what we like to start with is instead of just playing around with like, moving text around a page, right, which may or may not have a business impact, or, you know, yeah, really get us to learning anything about the brand, we're gonna say, hey, well, you know, your customers are buying these products together, you're not really offering bundles. Let's try a starter bundle. Yeah, let's try sample packs. And sometimes, yes, like, that's going to require the brand to rethink their offering. And logistically, it's going to be a bit more complicated, because they're gonna have to figure out how to fulfill those bundles, versus us just building a test and launching it. Yeah, but ultimately, to me, that's something that's much more worth it than testing. I don't know. Let's move the buy button a little higher up the page, right? Sure. What's the point of that? So yeah, things brands should test like experiment constantly with your upsells your bundles. Yeah, upsells add ons. I think that that's a great place to start. Is

William Harris 26:25

there an example of an upsell or a bundle that you've implemented that you were like this one absolutely killed it that you could talk about?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 26:36

Yeah, there's a couple. One, I think the first one that comes to mind for this brand called Moon Pod, maybe you've heard of them, they do this, like, these really cool beanbags. And we've been working with them for like four years now, four and a half years. That was probably like in the first couple tests that we did. We discovered through customer surveys that a lot of people were asking me about the other products that people saw in the product pictures in the ads. But you know, those products were not on the main PDP of the of the Moon Pod, because they're like accessories, but you really had to go through like collections, accessories, so it wasn't really on the path to purchase. Sure. So we said, Well, hey, how about we experiment with just adding those accessories? I think it's called the crescent. And then like, there's like this little ottoman thing. And we said, let's experiment with that and see if we can increase average order value. So we added boxes, checkboxes to the PDP. So when people would buy the Moon Pod, they could just add those options, I think it should go on the site today. And that added literally millions to the brand. Right? So that was pretty massive. Another example with Dr. Squatch. Actually, we played with quantity selectors, like their bar soaps, which was, especially like four and a half years ago, that was like their main flagship product, now they sell a bunch of things. But you know, it's like seven bucks a bar or something like that. So we're like, hey, well, how do we use that? Because Seven Bucks is not a lot. And it doesn't leave a lot of space for margin. So we saw in the surveys that a lot of people were buying more than one bar at a time. And we saw sorry, in the analytics show, and we saw in the surveys that yeah, people bought for their families, but also for themselves, and they wanted to stock up. So we started playing with how do we incentivize people to buy more than one bar. So then we introduced a quantity selector, then we introduced a quantity selector with different options, then, you know, like one pack, one bar, two bars, three bars, then we tried, you know, two packs, but that didn't work out because people couldn't sample the other ones. So there's like a lot of things that we did. And ultimately, what still on the website today, which is an option of one bar, two bar and three bars, something like that. That led to between, I think, between 36 and 52% increase in revenue per user, depending on the bar soap that was formed. Right. So that was massive. And today, it's a, you know, pretty massive brand. So I Yes, that's another great example, right there a little different. It's not just like a post purchase upsell, it's really thinking about the user, both for Moon Pod and for Dr. Squatch. But, and, you know, I have like, probably 100 More examples like that as well. So those are things that are I think, are pretty, not always simple to implement, but they're good places to start with. And, yeah, they're fun.

William Harris 29:46

Yeah, well, and I think that's what's so great about is that a lot of times it's the things that we're overlooking. We can sometimes focus on button colors or you know, like you said, text or whatever, and all of those can have really good impact but sometimes I It was, I don't know if I call it like the Amazon effect where I don't remember when. But there was a real good article about Amazon where they talked about how they're running like 10,000 tests a day. That's fine. And they're Amazon. And they have the ability to do that, but a lot of tiny little tests. But the reality is the test that you really should be running are some of these bigger swing tests where you're testing out bundles, or upsells, or things along those lines. That said, there is an Add to Cart button that I think is my favorite right now. And I was like, if you're going to test something, this is good. I'm going to share my screen. I want to know if you've seen this yet. I want to know if you know where I'm going with this. Did you see what Mr. piece came out? So Linda Bustos I really liked her as well. She's really cool. See that she she she found this Mr. Beasts new Add to Cart button. I mean, it is it is easily the biggest add to cart with like these a little bit dollars floating on it, i You can't miss this Add to Cart button, and to some degree that works from stock could work for everybody. But I really appreciate this.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 31:01

Yep. I mean, I think that's pretty cool. Now, well, my question would be what was there before? Sure. Right. Like, if they were testing it from, like, you know, if somebody were just to add, like those flying dollars, I mean, sure, you could test that if you have enough traffic? Is it the first thing you should test it? Probably not. But no, you know, I think like, this is a actually this brings me to a good point where like button colors, right? Like, that's always the thing that most people pick on it. I also pick, like, test button colors, like, unless you're Amazon or Google, you're never going to have enough traffic, just keep it makes a difference. And second, if the test loses, there's nothing to learn from that. Really, you know, it's just like, but now, here's an example where like, it could be worth testing that let's say you've got this brand, where like, one, they have a lot of traffic, their buttons are literally invisible. Like maybe they're using what we call ghost buttons. Yes. And you know, like your skim through the PDP and you can barely see the buttons, right? Well, maybe it's worth running a test where like, you completely change. You know how that looks. So they're not so invisible. Yeah. Now, I would recommend for most brands to just do it. Sure. Like, don't even test it. Just like if no one's seeing your buttons, you probably don't need to test that just like make your buttons like normal. But you know, sometimes there could be cases where you need to test it. And sometimes company company politics will make you will make you test it as well, right like that. That could also be a thing. Not ideal, but yeah.

William Harris 32:46

So what else if you're thinking, you know, you've got the opportunity to impact some people from a CRO perspective, right now, what else should we be thinking about doing not doing that we haven't talked about yet that you're like, hey, I really want to make sure you guys understand this when it comes to CRO?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 33:04

Yeah, so I think this is the most most most important thing about CRO is when you're trying to find test ideas. Don't just go on Twitter, or Google test ideas. Those can be great sources of inspiration. But don't let that be your starting point. Your starting point should be your customer problems, questions, objections, needs and motivations. The way to really understand that it's, I don't want to say simple because it can be simple. It can be complicated, but you know, really, it's to do your research. So I like to call that conversion research. And for example, just asking your customers like, what made you buy from us? Right? Or, you know, is there anything that's holding you back from making a purchase today? Like asking you those qualitative open ended questions just can reveal so much, you know, you can do that with surveys with people who bought from you, and then you can understand kind of what were the motivations and what got them, you know, over the fence. And then you can also do it with people that are just browsing the website and haven't bought yet. And obviously, same goes with analytics and everything, right? And just like getting a better grasp of like, what about your site? What about your brand, like, I get that, hey, maybe, I don't know. Allbirds tested this thing, and it worked really, really well for them. And you feel like your site is similar and it could do really well for you. But like, if it's if like your customers like if, let's say 25% of your customers are asking questions about your shipping policy, or returns. Sure and you really you're not sure about that or you you don't know because you haven't really taken the time to do that research to find that out. Right. Well then that new nav bar lay out that All birds did that knee do great for you? It could do well, but it's not going to have the same impact as like, you know, solving your customers biggest questions or pain point about shipping, right? So what I would say is really just taking time to make sure that what you're testing is relevant with your customers or journey, like focus on that. And that's going to be like, I think there's also like part of the bad things about CRO, sorry, I'm going on a tangent here, but it's still related to this. I think like, there's also that misconception that quality sorry, that quantity is more important than just quality. And that's the thing like sometimes brands get into that. That conception, that, hey, we just need to run a lot of AB tests. But the truth is no, like, don't focus on quantity, at first, like focus on launching, like maybe one really good solid AB test a month, you know, one that will be statistically valid, one that really solves your customer's pain point, one that no matter the test result, whether it does perform better, or whether it doesn't perform better than what you have on site, you know, if that test can teach you something valuable about your customer, that was valuable, right. So, you know, focus on, you know, tests that have high potential for learning tests that can influence the business model, and focus on fewer tests, higher quality tests, than just say, you know, running five, six tests a month, and they see like, because I think that's the number of tests per month is the wrong incentive to start with, especially for brands that I mean, even even at $100 million, like a lot of brands like will still benefit from testing the right things versus testing 10 things at the same time. So yeah, and I think that's where I see some CRO agencies being incentivized on the number of tests per month that they launch. I think that's totally wrong. And I'm sure some people will disagree. But look, I've been in, I've had space for six, seven years now, I've been into space for 12 years. And what the one thing I've learned from this is, building an AB test will always take longer than you expect it. And if you're incentivized on the number of tests per month, and especially you're an agency, and you have to deal with waiting for clients and assets, and then you have to do QA, like there's no way you're going to be incentivized to build the right tests, because the most impactful test can't be built within two days. And if they're built within two days, you probably didn't get the chance to test them enough to QA them enough. Right. So yeah, I think, sorry, I've gone on, like three levels of tangents there. But I think they're all kind of related.

William Harris 38:09

No, this is good, because I'm right there with you. And first of all, I'd like to mention my ADHD brain appreciates them. But also this thing that you're talking about where a lot of the incentives are in the wrong place. I see this in the PPC side as well, where the only way I can say is, I feel like a lot of people just don't have guts in the market right now. And it's understandable because things are in a bad spot, right. And so when you're, when you're let's just say the market is is not where you want it to be in the broader economy, right. And so you're hurting and when you need the when that's when I find you end up doing a lot of the worst things. And I think about this, like somebody who's who's drowning, and this is maybe such a morbid thought, but when somebody is actively drowning, they usually end up doing a bunch of motions that don't help them swim, they actually cause them to do the wrong things because of the panic. And I feel like we see that within the PPC side. I'm sure you do on the CRO side as well. Yeah, where because the brand is struggling when they get into CRO when they need CRO that's when they say we want to run 10 tests this month. And we're gonna run all these low hanging fruit tests hoping that we find something that improves things 1% But you've actually wasted 20% Trying to find that 1% improvement, instead of taking the time to do CRO when you when you have the ability to do it to to go back to the swimming metaphor to like learn the proper swimming mechanics at that time to optimize your ability to swim in the ocean when you weren't drowning. And I feel like there's there's a lack of people willing to take those bigger swings take the time to set up a few really good tests instead of 10 really horrible tests like changing button colors or text or

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 39:49

salutely and look like I understand why that's the case as well, right? Because, as an agency owner, it would likely be easier to sell our services If I were to tell potential clients, we're gonna run five tests per month or three tests per month, that would be easier to understand than me saying, hey, well, we don't know how many tests per month we're gonna run. Sometimes it might be two, sometimes it'd be three, it might be more, but one month could be one, right? Yeah, um, and I think like, we're pretty lucky because like, most brands that come to us understand that those that don't are generally just not a good shirt. But I do believe by doing so maybe we don't close as much from the get go. And I'm sure there's a lot of brands that will go with competitors that, you know, are very, very clear with how many tests are getting in everything. But I do think our retention is probably better, right? Like we keep our clients for a very long time, like the brands, all the brands you've mentioned in your intro, right? Like they've all been clients for for more than a year, and many of them like Dr. Squatch, four and a half years Moon Pod, four and a half years. Like there's a lot of those right. So I do think that on the client retention perspective, we're better off doing the right thing, even though we might suffer a little more as an agency with client acquisition. Yeah. And in a way, I do think it helps us attract the people we really want

William Harris 41:24

to work with. Yeah, yeah. And those are great brands. And Dr. Squatch, their, their commercials are absolutely hilarious. I feel like I want to see Danny DeVito in one of those sometime, right. And it's like, I love your work, right?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 41:38

It's like, yeah, they're funny commercials. So

William Harris 41:41

I want to transition a little bit than into the who is Raphael as well, because I like learning about like, who you are as a person. What makes you the type of person who likes to look at CRO and AB tests? Were there things in your childhood that said, Hey, I'm gonna be an entrepreneur because of this or this or? Yeah,

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 42:01

that is a great question. There's a couple things. I think one of the things that I've learned over time is, I've always preferred to make things better to optimize to improve, then to start them from scratch. And I think this is reflected in CRO, right, where it's like, I don't like, you know, like a brand new, like, I didn't like starting I mean, I did I really enjoy the early days of SplitBase. I don't know, like, I mean, I knew like I had a vision, and I still have a vision. Right? So that keeps me motivated. But I'm definitely having more fun today, now that we have a bigger team, we have more money, and that we can do more things. And when we're super scrappy, and I have to do everything. Right. So I would say yeah, just I think in terms of personality traits, personality trait, like I'm the person who's just like, I want the best, I always want, you know, what's the best of this thing that I can buy? What's the best vacuum that I can get? Right? Like, even though I just bought a new Dyson, the other day, I was like, you know, like, if I'm going to vacuum my home, I don't want to vacuum it twice. And I want to make sure when I'm vacuuming is fully vacuumed. Right. So I'm just gonna buy whatever is most expensive, because I know it's gonna be doing the best job. So you know, but that I think I like that way of thinking has been reflected in literally every aspect of my life. You know, walking to a destination, do I cross? You know, in diagonal? Do I jaywalking diagonal to get to the other side before the light changes? Right. And I think that, you know, helped me become this optimizer. Sure. Ultimately, that's what made me an optimizer,

William Harris 43:52

I can relate to this so much. And and part of the reason like what you just called out where you're like, well, if I'm going to do it, I want it to be the absolute best, and not just like kind of good. Does this ever paralyze you from making decisions to because I'll tell you from me for personal experience, like going to pick out a pair of jeans turns into like a spreadsheet that's color coded with all of these things for me, because I'm like, Well, I don't know, the styles are changing. So I need to look at this, I need to look at this. And I knew evaluate this and I need and then it turns into this thing where it's like, I can't just go and just be like, yep, that's the decision I want. Sometimes, well, sometimes I can, but even even picking out a gift for my wife, sometimes. It's there were times and I'll say and I'll admit this now, there were times when in, you know, in our early marriage, where it's like maybe I ended up like just not even showing up with gifts because like, Well, I was gonna get this but then I couldn't do this because I wanted to do this or I want to do this. This was really great. I really so but through it, I'm not getting it because I can't get what I really wanted. So just I'm done. And it's like, that's the wrong decision. But yeah, is that a problem that you run into as well?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 44:51

Oh, my God all the time. You know, like, at one point you have to figure out a system of like, how do you make decisions And I don't have like endless entrepreneurs have like, actual charts for their decision making systems. I don't, I wish I have but whatever I work my own way and sure, you know, but yeah, like there's a lot of things where like I really have developed a way to force myself into making a decision. I've found out that the bigger the decision, the easier it is for

William Harris 45:20

me agree.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 45:24

You know, like big business decisions, I can get clarity on very quickly, or as if it's like picking what sandwich to order from a menu like that is the end of my life.

William Harris 45:38

I feel the same way. Yeah, big decisions, not stressful at all the things that would maybe stress a lot of people out I feel like oh, this just intuitive just makes sense. I don't even need to think about it. But sometimes small decisions are crippling. What about you, you told me there was a fun story about Bitcoin High School, Dan Martell, several things that like Dan Martell is brilliant that I followed him for years. I love Bitcoin. I got into Bitcoin. I want to say I first started getting into that. And it was late 2014. Right. Tell me about what you were doing with Bitcoin in high school, Dan Martell.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 46:14

Yeah, so that's an interesting story. And I think it did shape me into who I am today as an entrepreneur. But so when Dan launched his company Clarity, which was like this service that helps you connect with other experts. He launched it in his hometown of Mungus, a small city in New Brunswick, Canada, on the east coast. There's like 100,000 people there. And I just really, I was still in high school. And I really, really wanted to like launch a business. I was frustrated of not being able to build a business. And I just saw Dan as like, Oh, this guy seems like he knows his stuff. So I tried to call him and I was actually I think his first or second call ever on clarity. When he launched it. And then while we're talking, he finds out that I live just a couple blocks away from where he left. And, you know, we're in this super small town. And Dan was like, hey, well, how about I just come pick you up? And we'll chat. And, you know, he, it was just so funny, because he had to convince my parent who was like this weird. But you know, and anyways, so that, you know, that's how we met. And eventually, we became really good friends. And he became a mentor of mine. And at one point, you know, Dan's like rap. Like, if you really want to do a business that's like in the fast growth industry. It was I can't remember what year it was. If I say yeah, I feel like I'm gonna get sure confused, but it was too early for Bitcoin, let's just say but people started talking about it. And he was like, There's Bitcoin. There's 3d printing, and maybe drones that are taking off and I was like, Oh, this topic sounds so boring to me. But let's try Bitcoin for some reason. Sure. And we ended up kind of working together. He was a bit like a silent partner on some bitcoin stuff. And he was like, Raph, you just really have to become like a Bitcoin expert if you want to build a Bitcoin consultancy, because that was kind of the idea. And that's what I was going to start. So he decides that we're going to New York in a couple of days from that day. So I booked my flights. It was I think, in two days from that conversation, he's like, You have to host a Bitcoin dinner. And that's two days before we get to New York key book. He booked and paid with the expectation that I pay him back after dinner because he expected me to be very successful at doing this. But he's like, Yeah, I booked you this restaurant there's you can fit 50 People pay me back sell tickets. And I'm like, Dan, you already crazy. We're flying in two days have never been to New York City. I don't know anyone there I've I'm new to Bitcoin as of a month ago. And he just kind of threw me under the bus. And I think he obviously he did it on purpose because I think he felt like I think that's kind of the way that he kind of does things. And Well, turns out we fly to New York, I sell out the dinner we add classes investors show up. So thou and yeah, it did kind of create within a month, like at the time like Oh, from that I got invited to speak at Las Vegas Bitcoin Conference. I got invited to speak to bankers in Lebanon about Bitcoin, this massive Middle Eastern financial conference. And it all started just from that thing. And kind of the lesson from this and you know, still today I find it hard to get to that level of pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. But you know, Dan was one of those guys who kept pushing me literally off the cliff with the expectation that I knew how to find a parachute while I was balling and how to operate it. And that was like such like, an interesting and I was like, I wasn't even allowed to drink. You know, like, I was probably 17. I was I don't think I could even book a hotel on my own at the time. So it was like such a weird experience. And yet, yeah, that's a lesson I'll never forget. Because I think it kind of pushed me even if I ended up paying Bitcoin and definitely wasn't the space for me. You know, I think, eventually that and all the other similar experiences Dan, put me through. Yeah, kind of built the intrapreneur I am today.

William Harris 50:49

Yeah, transferable skills, right. And I think that that's to your point, we oftentimes don't find the success we want, because we give ourselves way too many options to not do it to not succeed. When if you're just put in a position, you say, you don't have a choice, you got to do it. It's in two days, make it happen. We come up with a much more creative ways of figuring out how to make things happen. And yeah, it's good. It just reminds me you know, even clarity, that's a blast. I haven't heard of clarity. And I feel like a decade now, I don't know how long it's been. But I remember when that was very new. I was unclear to exist. It probably does. I think clarity.fm To right at the time, it was not calm. I don't know if it's dot com now. And it was a really great way for people to meet with mentors and mentors who are out in share with you know, what, what they've learned, and they're looking for people who are hungry, like you were at that time. Just reminds me of it's like, you know, I wish we could just all be get along like we used to in middle school, right? It's like, I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat and be happy kind of thing. Yep, yep, totally. Um, what about books, mentors, podcasts? What are other things like that, that you really like to listen to? And learn from? Especially when it comes to CRO but it could be about entrepreneurship or anything that you just enjoy? Even personal? Maybe it's fiction? I don't know.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 52:20

Yeah, you know, I used to be so big on podcasts. And now it kind of depends. I feel like I haven't listened to any podcast recently. I don't know why. But I do read books, not as many as I want to. But I do have a very tactical approach to reading book, which is, whatever I'm, you know, the most challenged with right now in the business. I will read a book about that, or multiple books around that. One topic specifically. And one book will funny we talk about Dan Martell, because actually, the best book I've read lately is his new book, which is called Buy Back Your Time. I have it right there. And it's probably one of those books where like, I bought multiple copies, because as I read it, I was like, Oh, this, like, this friend could really use this or even someone on my team could really use this. And it was hiring. My new assistant, you know, kind of in the process when he released his book, and I was like, oh my god, this is such a godsend. Yeah. Great book Anyways, on figuring out how to work with an assistant, but also just how to better manage and organize your time. Very, very, very actionable, which is how I like because I'm way too ADHD, just read theory. Sure.

William Harris 53:37

I like that. And it reminds me you know, whenever you find that book that you really liked that much that you want to buy a bunch of copies the last time I had a book like that was a book called Love Work by Dave Mortensen, one of the cofounders of Anytime Fitness. And so I'm I'm definitely like visionary, typical, if you're familiar with the US mentality versus like integrator, right. And one of the things that I really appreciated about Dave is, you know, within the company, he's, he's the President, he's the COO. And so he's looking at things from a very different lens that I was in, and it was much more around the idea of like, how do you get your team to love work to love what they're doing? And and, boy, that transformed things for me, because I don't know about you. But as an entrepreneur, I intrinsically love work, maybe more than I should. And so it's like, but how do you get people in and I will say this, like, it's not a matter of like, you know, money to a point where it's like, I would be this motivated, even if there wasn't money involved in it. I totally, that's the same for a lot of employees. It doesn't matter how much you are to pay somebody there's, there's a limit to how much that motivates somebody. There's so much more richness and depth to human emotion and what motivates us and finding out how do we get people to love work and so anyway, so it's a really great book, and I bought, I don't remember how many copies of it tons of copies had him sign them and everything and so that way, you know autographed copies to everybody on my team, like all my clients at the time, like contractors, but it was just it was that book that it was like, boy, this really helped me see things in a very different way.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 55:14

Amazing. I'll I'll read it. I've never heard of it. Yeah, that sounds great.

William Harris 55:20

We're coming up to the end, I have two more things that I want to do. One is just something silly. And then I want to end it for real. I like to just do. Basically, it's like, what's that mean? And I don't know if you've ever played the game balderdash. But I'm gonna give you a word. It's a word that you probably have never heard of before. And you just make up a definition for this word and make it sound believable for us. So the word that I have for you, is Mapal. M A BBLE. Wrath. What is the definition of madal?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 55:52

Yeah, the definition of Madbull is when you really like playing with pebbles. So it's generally the action of rotating pebbles in your hand, and really feeling their texture. Generally, that's a pastime of people with ADHD. So similar definition, could be fidgeting. Yeah,

William Harris 56:23

I love it. I actually kind of feel like I want to now my ADHD brain is turning on different ideas. Okay, if people wanted to follow you connect with you work with you? What is the best way for them to get in touch?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 56:38

Yeah, so Twitter is a great place. I mean, I was on vacation for three weeks, and I did not pre scheduled my tweets. Oops. So but generally, yeah, Twitter is a good place where I'll respond. If you have questions. You want to interact with me. And I do tweet from time to time as well. I'm not the best at it. But hey, I'm there. Alternatively, LinkedIn as well. And if you want to work with us, SplitBase.com. You can request your free proposal read about our services. And yeah, that's where, you know, you can book a call with us and we'll be happy to hop on a call and chat. And you mentioned

William Harris 57:18

Twitter. What's your handle just so everybody can hear that?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 57:21

Yeah. They'll probably have to look at the show notes. But it's R Paulin Daigle. So R like Raphael, and then my last name all in one, go. Got it. Okay. Yeah, P-a-u-l-i-n D-a-i-g-l-e.

William Harris 57:36

We will put that in the show notes then. Raphael, I really appreciate you coming on talking to us giving us your time and wisdom here today. Yeah,

Raphael Paulin-Daigle 57:45

thank you. That was a pleasure. I had a lot of fun. I could have gone for another hour.

William Harris 57:49

I feel the same way. And everybody else. Thank you for tuning in. And I hope you got something really valuable out of this and have a great rest of the day.

Outro 57:58

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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