Your Next Million - The Brick and Mortar Guide to Online Growth - Part 2

Speaker A: Welcome back to the Retail Initiative podcast. I'm excited because we're in our four part series, your Next Million. Really, like bringing the success of your storefront. Like, how do you take all the things that have led to building a wildly successful brick and mortar business and how do we transfer that to your online presence? And last week I talked about the, uh, three core shifts that you need to make your shift in identity. Like how we see ourselves as not owning a store that happens to have a website, but seeing ourselves as a brand that can serve our customers wherever they engage us. So we do that through an in store experience and through an online experience. And in order to do that, like you as the entrepreneur, you have to see yourself in a different lens. I talked about the shift in priority, like really defining what do we want our goals to be, and then reverse engineering and saying, okay, well, what decisions do I need to make differently today in order to get there? And then we, uh, started to talk about a shift in experience, the way that we serve our customers online. And that's what I want to dig deep into today. And it's honestly, it's one of my favorite subjects. I'm one of the few guys in the world, like, I love shopping and there's a few stores in Houston that I love. Like, I shop with on a very regular basis. The majority of my clothes that I'm not buying online come from these stores. But I'll be honest, like, the majority of them, when I visit their store and I think through the experience, I have the feeling I have, and then I go to their websites, um, they don't live up meaning, like the feelings that I get, the kind of questions they're asking me, I'm not able to find things in a similar way. And so what I want to talk about today is like, how do we take the feeling, and not just the feeling or the vibe, but also the experience of your storefront? How do we take that and transfer that into your online experience? Because, like, I love, like, we're going to get into traffic, we're going to get into operations, we're going to get into retention. But what I've discovered is, uh, a lot of us think that traffic is our biggest problem. We just need to get more eyeballs on our site. But the reality is, if this traffic that we're already getting is not turning into paying customers, is it a good idea to go and pay or get on a hamster wheel to just get more traffic? Um, at the end of the day, what we want to do is make sure that we have a good salesperson. You wouldn't throw some huge event in your store and put on the floor like, your worst associate ever. You would never imagine doing that. But that's what a lot of us are doing with our online presence. So instead of looking at just like fancy bells and whistles and quote, unquote, e commerce best practices, though I love a lot of those things, I love to look at the store experience. Especially, like, if you're still listening to this, I'm assuming you have a brick and mortar store, it's doing well. So why don't we start with, like, the human aspects? What is it that makes your brand special? What is it that attracts people to what you're doing, and how do we bring the best of that online? And so what I want to do today is I'm going to walk through the store experience. Like, when I visit a storefront, what. What goes into having an awesome experience? And then I want to talk through, okay, what is the equivalent of those things online? So from when I walk in to when I start browsing around to once someone engages me, and we have like a customer service interaction to even trying stuff on and then ending with the purchase. And so we'll talk through each of those things. So let's start with the first impression. Uh, have you ever, like, while traveling, just seen a store? Like, from the outside, something catches your eye and you are like, hey, I really have to go here. And it's worth dragging the kids. It's worth the pain and the butt that sometimes even just taking the detour can be. And then you walk in and you get that feeling where you're like, oh, my gosh, like, someone created a brand for me, like, this store. Literally, like, I could spend a gajillion dollars if my spouse wasn't here. I probably would be spending way more money because I love everything about what's in here. Chances are, like, if you have traction in your storefront, you've been able to do this in your online presence. This is where that starts, is that first impression. The first impression is so important. And so as I go through each of these steps, what I'm going to talk about is one, a mistake that I see all the time with this piece. And then how should we address it? Um, so when we think through the first impression, one thing I need you to know, and this stat is so important. Um, when I load your website, let's say I load it on my phone right now, around 70% of people, the only thing that they are ever going to see is what loads on their phone when they visit your site. Meaning their thumb is doing nothing. It's not scrolling at all. They are not like checking out the entirety of your site. They are seeing only what is on the top of your site. And from that they are determining, is this a brand for me? So the mistake that I see is we really, like, we make it all about us. Our logo is massive. Our copy, like, the words on the top are like, welcome to our store. And we have a picture of our storefront. What that ends up doing is it doesn't elicit the feeling of what we're trying to do. So here, what we want to think through is what I call the three by three first impression. I'm really just going to address part of it in this for the sake of time. Um, and it's three core questions. Like, when we land on a website, um, in the back of our heads, we're not even aware that we're asking this. We, we're actually asking three big questions that we need to be able to answer in like a split second for our customers or for our traffic. We want them to land on our site. And the first question is, is this for people like me? Do people like me shop here? And, uh, so we do that with visuals, we do that with copy. What we don't do that with is pictures of our store or even our logo or things that are about us. One of the most important things you can know, like, have you ever met someone, um, at a bar, at a wedding, at a party, and you start a conversation and they just go off talking about themselves constantly. All they do is talk about themselves. And you leave that conversation and you're like, I just feel like I was Talked at for 20 minutes. No, like, they didn't ask a single question. Now think about how you felt at the end of that conversation. Now, if you've ever read the book how to Win Friends and Influence People, he talks about that people's favorite subject is themselves. And when you have a conversation, if you ask really good questions and you just get the other person talking about themselves more, they're going to get up from that conversation and be like, man, like, Josh is awesome. He's such a cool guy. Now they. If I didn't share anything about myself, they don't actually know me. But what they do know is how I made them feel by having them talk about something that they care about, which is themselves. When we build websites that are all about us, uh, that's what we're doing, it's like someone walking into your doors and the second they walk in you're like, hey, welcome to our store. Did you know this was like a childhood dream of mine? I always wanted to open something and so we opened in 2020 and so on and so forth. You just start talking. You would never do that in person. But why do we do that online? Really good brands with that first impression, more than making them understand, you will make them feel understood. The customer will land on your site and be like, this brand gets me and this does so many different things. And so we do that best with visuals and with copy. The next question that people are asking is, can you help me? Like, I have these problems. I, uh, have this solution I'm looking for. Are you capable of doing that again? That comes through visuals. That comes through like the cat. The categories that we're showcasing in those pieces and the last one is can I trust you? Now, there's a few things that lead to trust and we can't get into all of them. Some of it is simply professional design and it's cohesive. A lot of it is things like social proof, um, like showing reviews and that type of thing. But this first impression is so important because we know that people don't scroll. And so if people don't scroll, that means we have this little area on the top of our site and from that little area, it's going to dictate everything else. So what we can't do is just assume like, well, if they scroll, if they see this, uh, then they're going to know blank. They're not going to. 70% of people don't do, don't do that. They land on the site and they either click back to where they were before or they use the search bar, they click on your hero image or they go to your navigation. So that first impression is so important. And if you're going to address anything today, address that one. Simply throwing a new hero image up, uh, that big one on the top can be a massive needle mover. So that's the first impression. Making sure that people land and feel connected to our brand, that we understand them. They get us, we, we are there for people like them. Number two, we're able to actually help them. Number three, trust then. So when we're now in the store and we're like, okay, this is awesome, so we start walking around and we're browsing and looking around, just checking the store out. And honestly, for me, like, this is one of the most Fun parts of shopping is you get to discover new things. And here what we want to think through when it comes to online, like there's a lot of things that go into it, um, but the biggest one is thinking through how we guide their journey. A lot of us, like the mistake that people make is, especially in the navigation is we build navigations like we would a point of sale system. Like our point of sale system has all these categories and that is how some people shop. But sometimes do you think, like, I don't know if I'm looking for a top, I don't know if I'm looking for a dress, I don't know, I know I have this event coming up and they kind of want to check out your curation. They want to see multiple things all in one place. And so here it's like we can either go all products, which is not a great idea, or we just go category based, but that has them clicking way too much. And so here we like to have a hybrid of uh, like curated collections as well as category driven pieces. But we want to guide their journey in really effective ways. Just like you would merchandise in your store. You know, you don't just put all your tops on one table, all your, all your dresses hanging. No, like you curate those things together. Let's do the same thing in our online experience. Okay, so we've walked in, we've made that great first impression, we've browsed around and we love it now. Like someone's going to walk up and they've already made a connection that happened in the beginning. Now it's like, hey, what brings you in? And here is the mistake that people are making, um, is honestly, like when we go back to that category based piece, we're not really helping them. We're sending them on a scavenger hunt. Let's even say you're doing well, you're taking your own product photos and doing those needle moving things. But even if they love what's in those photos, like they have to click around so much on your site just to find those things. So instead, like, let's start to think through what kind of questions are we asking in store and how can we make sure that our site is answering very similar questions. If someone came in and they're like, hey, what brings you in? Oh, I'm looking for a dress. You don't just grab four dresses and hand it to them and be like, hey, try these on. You're going to ask another question. What for? Like, is there an occasion that this Is for. So on our site, why would we not have dresses? By occasion? Yes. By category as well. And, uh, so there are other questions we might ask. If you're shopping for jeans, you might be shopping by brand or by fit or by wash. Like, there's all these different paths that people take. Thinking through what are the core questions that we ask? And then how do we make sure that our site is able to answer those same questions without throwing up tools that nobody uses? Like a chatbot? Like, those can be fine. They're great for customer service. But that's not how people shop. So we want that to be built intuitively into the customer journey. One of my favorite things in our program is, like, we do role playing through the store to get to the heart of what those things are. So we aren't just throwing up, like, fancy bells and whistles or making our navigation far too complex. This is one of those, like, super strategic pieces. But that is a huge needle mover when it comes to increasing conversion. All right, so we first impression, we have that nailed down. We've made our customer feel understood. Then we browse around and we guide their journey and what they're checking out online. Then we get into customer service and thinking through those core questions and translating those things into the things, like the way our navigation is structured or the way our featured collections are showcased on our homepage. Um, then we get to trying on. Now, if you think about it, trying on, what is it all about? On one hand, it's like, hey, I need to make sure it fits. Uh, yes. But there's another part of it that is, I would say, more important. And it's the idea of seeing ourselves in that product. And there's an emotional thing that happens there. When we try something on. We. We build. Like, we, uh. Have you ever tried something on that, uh, honestly, just makes you look so good. It flatters the parts of you that you love the most, and it kind of hides the things that you don't want to showcase. And there's like, you feel your chest kind of puff up a little bit. Like, there's this confidence that comes in. That's an emotional thing. So when it comes to online, what we want to do is start to think through our photos. And does our. Do our. Does our photography really elicit a feeling of, like, I could feel like that. And so here I always want to follow what I call the three P's of strong photography. The first one is people. People that your customer number one relate to. Like, hey, they're like, Me, or better yet aspire to be. Meaning like not only could I kind of relate to them, but I wish I could be them. Aspirations are one of the most powerful tools that you can use in marketing. So you can use photography to showcase that. Uh, now if you don't have that kind of model or whatever like relate to can, it definitely works. And so translation of that, let's say your customer's 40 and we have these 18 year old models where we're using vendor images. You're going to see where that's going to fall off. The next one is personality of your brand. If you have a super fun brand and then your photos are like these editorial, you know, just standing and staring at the camera like you look uninterested, that doesn't really translate. Or if you're just standing and smiling at the camera in every single image but there's no personality to it, there's that disconnect. So we always want to bring in like a brand personality. And then lastly is product like it needs to have a product focus. When we can have these three things, that's what creates photography, that creates that emotional connection. Then the last one, checking out like actually closing the sale. Now luckily if you're using a decent e commerce platform, I'm obsessed with Shopify. That piece is covered for you. Here's the thing, the mistake that I'll give you and this one I can't give you um, like an in store equivalent but I can tell you where your, your conversion is being crushed in surprises. When I get to the checkout I should have zero surprises on what my end total is, how much they're going to pay for shipping, how fast it's going to be shipped. Those pieces we need to all answer earlier in the journey. And so having your, your shipping stuff on the product page is super helpful with conversion. So that's today, um, going through like how do we take our in store experience? And what I want to encourage you to do is get in your customer shoes and think through the uh, experience. From first impression to browsing to customer service, to trying something on, to checking out, think through these different stages and think okay, how can we translate that online? Yes, fancy bells and whistles are cool. All that stuff is great. But instead of looking at that first, let's base it off of things you already do really, really well. So thanks for listening today. I hope that you got some value and some ideas, some things you can start applying to your site. Once you can implement these next week we're going to get into? How do we drive way more traffic to our site? What are the strategies, especially for brick and mortar retailers that also want to drive in store traffic? How do we drive people to our site in an effective way? Hey, thanks for tuning into this episode of the Retail Initiative podcast. If you want more free resources, trainings, downloads, you can get those@, uh, madebycapital.com podcast. Again, that's madebycapital.com podcast. And for those of you that are serious and really want to take the success that you've built in your brick and mortar storefront and you want to create that same level of success online, I invite you to schedule a free call with me, uh, at, ah, madebycapital.com schedule where we'll dig into your business, like where things are now, where you're wanting to go, getting really clear on your goals. And what are the two or three things that might be standing in the way of getting there now? Look, if we're a good fit, I'd love to share what that looks like. And if not, my hope is that you leave with clarity on where to focus for you to reach your goals. Uh, so again, thanks for tuning in and as always, leave a review, make sure you're subscribed, and I cannot wait to see you next time.