#159: Maximizing Profits: How to Optimize Your Ecommerce Site for Conversions

Please support the show if you liked today's episode:

• If you love the podcast, please get someone else to listen, too!
• If you enjoyed this episode of the Ecommerce Coffee Break podcast, please head over to Apple Podcasts, leave a rating, write a review, and subscribe.
• Share the podcast with your family, friends, and co-workers.
• Tag the podcast on Instagram @clauslauter and let me know what you like about it.
• If you like the content and would like to support the podcast, you can buy me a coffee here.
• Become a guest on the show or sponsor an episode.

Claus Lauter: Hello. Welcome to another episode of the e-Commerce Coffee Break. Today we want to talk about how to optimize websites online and e-commerce stores for conversions. Now, there's a big topic, listeners that have been on the show, , know about me and conversion rate optimization. I'm a big fan of that, and there goes a lot.

Of different things into to make a website this store really high converting. So therefore, export. Today on the [00:02:00] show is Yuxin Zhu. He's the c e o and co-founder of replo.app. replo was founded by uc and his founder Noah, who met 2011 while studying computer science at uc, Berkeley. In 2012, they launched Berkeley.

time.com, a digital course scheduling platform used by the University of California that continues to be used over their 1 million people by each year. Prior to starting Relo, Yuxin was an engineering manager at Uber and he led a team of 25 people there. So he has a vast experience when it comes to e-commerce and to the online world.

So let's welcome Chen to the show. Hi, how are you today?

Yuxin Zhu: Great. Thanks for having me on. You're welcome.

Claus Lauter: Tell me why is conversion rate optimization, or why is optimizing a website for conversion such a huge

Yuxin Zhu: topic? It becomes more and more important every year in Silicon Valley, 10, 15 years ago people were thinking about conversion rate optimization, right?

With like funnels and optimizing websites and things like that. But I feel like now it's like even bigger and you're like, oh, wait, how can I even get [00:03:00] bigger? and I think there's like a few kind of major changes. I feel like a lot within e-commerce specifically, like things are getting more competitive.

There's a lot more money behind a lot of brands now, it's really hard for, teams to stand out. And when products kind of start looking the same , and when industries become more competitive, there's only so much kind of purchasing power consumers have, , when people do land on your site, , they are converting to a purchase. I think there's also kind of like technological factors, for example, like the recent, like iOS privacy changes and things like that where, , it's becoming harder to, figure out attribution, figure out analytics.

The number of like tools that to measure conversion. and the different number of channels is also increasing, right? Your buyers might be coming from, your Facebook ad or , your TikTok ad, but they might also be coming from like radio or TV usually people aren't coming in from like one channel.

They're coming in from multiple channels. So it's like, how do you figure out attribution? How do you figure out like where to spend money and maybe that channel isn't working out. There's just so many different factors now. So it's like the topic is getting more complicated and then also the competition is increasing.

Now people are [00:04:00] like, okay, this is like an interesting topic to talk about because it's so complicated. Right.

Claus Lauter: And I think what this makes is even more complicated. We're not talking about a simple page, we're talking about lending pages, we're talking about product detail pages, we're talking about testing different devices and so on, so forth.

So it's really, really complex. Mm-hmm. and the poor marketing manager who has to maintain, for instance, a Shopify store, , overwhelm and, , we are creating clarity, but is a really, really big problem there. Now, in the past, if you wanted to change , a side, , it was also difficult. You need a developer, you need to have someone who knows H G M L and JavaScript and all of these things.

Luckily enough, this is becoming easier and easier. So that's was rep is coming in and I wanna dive a little bit later into this, but first of all, what's the process of creating a user-centered website or page? What kind of steps do you need to go?

Yuxin Zhu: There's not like a set rule how these pages should be designed. There's all of these kind of like guides online or like gurus online.

They're like, oh, like you have to design a landing page this way. And I think there's a lot of kind of like common [00:05:00] things that work and , don't work, . At the end of the day, like you really have to think about your team and think about the brand. And this doesn't even just apply to e-commerce, like just generally.

It's like you're on the internet trying to sell something to someone, right? Whether that's a service or you know, a brand or a product. And you have to like think about who your core user is, like who is the person who would buy this product, who would be engaged by this product? And a lot of that could be driven by data, but a lot of it's also just like, who are you as a company trying to sell to?

intrinsically think about this. They're like, oh, I have to do landing pages, or I have to do like product display pages. And it's like, okay, take a step back. Think about like who your , target audience is, what is like the story you want to tell?

And that usually starts even way before people ever come onto your site, right? It's about how you. Do messaging on social media, how you , write your emails, like how you talk about your brand, like with your friends. That really matters because like, it also informs you, it's like, okay, if you talk to your friends and they're not resonating with what you're saying, like they're not in your core customer group or maybe, you know, like you have to change , who you're talking about your product.

So I think that really kinda like starts macro, like, who are you [00:06:00] trying to sell to? What is the story you're trying to sell? And then I think like each step of that funnel becomes really easy, right? It's. It informs, you know, the story you're telling like the first paragraph, which is kind of like the, ad that you put out, or like the email that you put out with , what type of content is there.

And then kind of like weaving that story into, the landing page to purchase. They flow the product page and it needs to be a consistent story. Right. And then, by the time because there's multiple touchpoints. And then at like, once people are going through these multiple touchpoints and they might be, you know, a week apart or whatever, then like, you know, the landing page becomes easy.

It's like, okay, like this is a very natural flow because you're kind of telling the middle of the story there, rather than try to like reinvent something from scratch. Right? So I think that's like generally kind of like how I think about, , design and user experience in general is like kind of telling that story.

Claus Lauter: Okay, so now in a past, it was always said that a, , landing page converts generally better than a product detail page, but I think that's not really the case anymore. You can do a lot to make a product detail page , highly converting or high converting. Mm-hmm. , , what's your take on that?

Yuxin Zhu: Because people are [00:07:00] so used to like building on Shopify and, and , these platforms, I think there's this concept of like a product detail page and there's a concept of a landing page and, and really they're kind of just like stuff on a website, right?

So it's like, if you think about. Just stuff on a website, like anything can be a pd, P D P, and anything can be a landing page. I, I think the way we think about it is like a P D P generally speaking is more generic. It's like, Hey, here's some generic information about this product. Here's like the instructions and everything.

You can, it can be very, very nicely designed. Like PDPs don't have to be like terrible, right? It's a generic page, so it's like anyone can come on and potentially buy that product. , the way I think about a landing page is like, it's a targeted, like, kind of going back to that story metaphor, it's part of a story, right?

, it's not just like, Hey, you know, why should you use this product? It's kind of like, Hey, this is why you should use this product in this context. It's Mother's Day, or it's Valentine's Day, or it's like Christmas, or it's like whatever. Like, here's why you need this product. For someone in this age group, , living in this area needs this product for, this date.

Having multiple different landing pages, it's like you can tell [00:08:00] a very targeted person's story to each person. If I try to sell you something or , I'm your friend and I try to sell you something.

Right? And it's like a totally different narrative because there's a certain level of trust there. That's why landing pages convert better because they're just , so much more targeted to, telling that story. Okay.

Claus Lauter: Now Shopify has come a long way when it comes to how you can edit your page, , with Shopify online shopping 2.0, which came out at some point last year.

is a lot of things you can do by now, but really creating lending pages is still a bit of a struggle with the onboards tools. Now, re has a solution for that. Tell me a little bit, what's your approach there and what have you developed to make life easier?

Yuxin Zhu: Yeah, I think the fundamental insight that we had, when we started this company, , was that the space is getting increased, incom competitive, in the e-commerce space.

, companies are more focused , on design. , they're more focused on brand, they're more focused on trust. , you can't just get away with, you know, a simple drop shipping, you know, landing page anymore and expect to have very high conversion, you know, like four or five years ago. The space is getting increasingly [00:09:00] competitive.

, at the same time, like people. They need to do more testing, right? There's many more different audiences. People are selling in different channels now. , they're selling in way more, you know, advertising, way more markets. That's really challenging because you not only have to, have a really nicely designed landing page, you also have to have a.

Because you wanna do a bunch of testing. , and then the third thing I think also is that like people are getting more used to using tools to do design, photography. They're working with more agencies and partners. We see a lot of brands now using Figma and like Sketch to do a lot of designs and they have in-house designers and generally, like, they'll hire someone for branding , and visual design and graphic design like way before they ever hire developer.

We need to make sure, you know, our brand is trustworthy and, we're telling the story of what we're abouts. This is why we created relo, if you use a Shopify theme or if you use basic page builders in the app store, that works great if you kind of want a more basic page and you want some content.

But a lot of brands are thinking more about like, how do I create these, really visually nice pages , that tell the story of what we're trying to sell, what our company's about. The thing about rapport is that it's totally [00:10:00] customizable. The layout system is exactly like, , the Figma auto layout system.

, we actually just announced today that we raised, 4 million seed round, , partially from Figma. So a lot of the user experience, a lot of the design aesthetics, the kind of workflows are very similar to kind of how designers work on these teams. , which enables these companies to iterate really, really quickly on these landing pages, you know, get, you know, 10 or 20 launched every single week, , without ever really having to hire a full-time developer.

[00:11:00]

Claus Lauter: [00:12:00] okay. That saves a ton of time. Your integration into Shopify is native. So what's actually the process to get started and to build your first landing page within Shopify, but using relu.

Yuxin Zhu: We're live on the Shopify app store, so if you search re R E P L o, you can find our integration there.

, or you can go to our website, relo.app, , and you can just create an account. , you can manage multiple Shopify stores within one account, so agencies and partners find that really helpful. But, , once you integrate your store, We give you a bunch of templates to use out of the box. So we have like 30 or 40 templates.

We have like hundreds of different sections that we know already comfort well. A lot of times people just pick one of these sections, but you can also design something from scratch. All you have to do is, you know, go in, , Update the images and, and text you want, and then click publish.

We handle all of the publishing to Shopify. We handle the integration with Shopify. We make sure the page is loading quickly. We do a lot of like lazy loading of assets and the page loads really quickly. A lot of times Shopify stores load really slowly, like how do we make sure things are still loading as quickly as possible?

The native integration with Shopify is, Super key here for like analytics and, and all the different apps [00:13:00] people are using. , it's super easy to get started. We have companies that are like one person using us. We have companies that are doing a hundred million this year using us.

So it's , like a wide spectrum , of users.

Claus Lauter: Okay. Now, native integration means also you can use all the features of Shopify file. What happens if you have, I don't know, features that you have on an app and that you want to integrate into a lending page? How does that.

Yuxin Zhu: Sometimes integrating apps , isn't the easiest thing in the world. And, and like I think we, both of us have experience with this, so we try to make it as easy as possible. I mean, but because it's on Shopify and we're converting everything back into liquid, as if kind of a developer wrote that page, you're able to insert other apps as well.

, we're moving pretty quickly to make that, integration even easier.

, generally like anything you can do on Shopify, you can do in Rob Low it becomes quite easy , for people to integrate and, building on Shopify and, and building natively within Shopify is that it's a lot harder to do actually than just, deploying a website somewhere and living on your own island.

But the user experience, the end product is just like a lot nicer if you have that integration. Okay.

Claus Lauter: I [00:14:00] just wanna take one step back and go into, the integration, the flow, and the reasoning why you should have a landing page over a product detail page. Give me some examples how your clients, or in which context your clients are using landing pages within their Shopify store.

Yuxin Zhu: There's kind of three major use cases for RAP today

As a brand, you need to tell so many different stories. And, and some of them just happen to be landing pages because you're driving traffic to it. One really big example of like something that traditionally isn't a landing page is like we work with this company called Studs. They're a piercing company in, the States they have physical retail everywhere.

Big part about getting your ears pierced it's something that's affecting your body. You want have some user education around it. You want to tell, explain to people what they are. So a lot of times they'll have landing pages actually driving to user education.

And it's not even, directly buying a product online. It's like, hey, like come into our stores. Like experience a difference of like our brand versus someone else's brand or going to like a tattoo parlor or something. That's an example where it's like you're not even directly selling something, but you're kind of telling the story of like trust and, eventually that will lead to a conversion , in a sale for your company.

But it's kind of like indirect, . So for example,[00:15:00] , , people , will use it for, if someone purchased a product previously and then they'll retarget them , on social media or Facebook or whatever, and be like, Hey, like, here, here, upsell into a subscription, or, you bought this great product three times, like maybe you should consider getting a subscription and we have an integration with all of the different subscription apps.

So that's kind of like a interesting thing where it's like there's no p d P that's like only selling subscriptions. That's a weird thing because 95% of people won't. Have ever bought your product. You're kind of convincing 'em to buy a product, but you can actually have the separate page in , which is kind of like, Hey, you've bought our product like three times.

Click this button, upgrade to a subscription. , it'll save you money. And it's kind of this like narrow, kind of interesting use case, but it, converts really well because like, you know, everyone who comes on the page to have bought the product like a bunch of times already. You can tell this really compelling story because the less people you focus on, the, the more convincing you kind of are. As a company. I think that really drives conversion and, that brings in a lot. Over a large number of subscribers that brings in a, ton of revenue for, the businesses that do that.

Claus Lauter: Yeah, I think I have amazing examples, , to show our listeners and the viewers on YouTube what your [00:16:00] exchange can do with a tool like that and creating more content in different styles. , when you said it comes with a lot of templates, , within Shopify, what is the timeline or what's the learning curve for someone who wants to get.

Yuxin Zhu: We have people with no, , coding experience. They've never written a single line of code in their life, and they go into rap and they're like, I love this.

They'll use it. 10 or 11 hours, , a day and it's like super crazy to see like what the average time people spend in the editor is. And like, a lot of people will spend like hours and hours like just playing with stuff and they're like, I spent the whole weekend on this and I'm like, Jesus, like, you spent more time using this than I have.

It's really easy to get started. Like you can use our templates, you can change a lot of copy, you can also do a lot of experimentation because in Shopify it's really hard to like, , suddenly go from one layout to another layout with one button you can like rearrange everything the vast majority of people I would say , are using relo just by themselves and, and they're able to get by without, interacting with a developer or anyone from our team.

A lot of people are busy. They're training out like 30 or 40 landing pages a week on relo, which is like really insane. It's, not possible for anyone to do [00:17:00] like by themselves. So we also have a team of relo experts we probably had like 20 people in the Slack channel that we were using for customer support, and now it's like over 700 people in that, Slack channel.

That community's going super quickly and it's like freelancers, it's agencies, people who can take a Figma design or Adobe design and, convert it. And build it in relo.

, you give us a design, we'll build it in relo , in three business days, we'll turn it around and we can also parallelize that so we can build, 20 landing pages. A week at the same exact time for you. , and that's just a separate service we offer. I don't know where to start because I don't have a background , in conversion rate optimization, or I don't have a background in design.

That's fine. We'll introduce you to one of our freelancers. , they actually work with a lot of big brands that are doing like 50, 60 million a year. Even for a few hundred dollars, , depending on what your budget is, they'll actually design the landing page. They'll write the copy for you.

They'll work with one of our experts to build it in ra. Five day turnaround time, they'll have a landing page for you. We built the software and then we were like, oh wait, there's like actually a bunch of services that we can add to this. Like, we don't make any money off of it.

But it makes people [00:18:00] engaged. like we have people talking about, you know, cumber optimization and design in our Slack channel and we're like, this has nothing to do with our software. But that's perfectly fine because I think people are having these conversations and it's really fun to see.

We want to help people wherever we can. We have literally a calendar link where you can book a demo with someone on our team, still on our website, and people are like, that's crazy. And we get 30 or 40 demos a week.

For us it's worth it because we talk to each merchant and we understand everyone's busy. And we have services at every level with our freelancers and partners to help. If you need help or you can just go in , and do everything yourself as well.

Claus Lauter: . , I was on your website earlier today and because it's difficult to show a graphic tool in a podcast and you have a video there where you basically show people how it works, and I think it's like a three or four minute video, so it's easy to digest. you were talking about the budget.

, give me an idea about the pricing. .

Yuxin Zhu: The budget for, that's around 200 to $250 us. , and it'll generally go even cheaper if you're building out multiple pages. So if it's a one-off project, it'll be around 200. , a lot of times it'll be like one 50 to 200, something like that. , and our guarantee is that we [00:19:00] have turned around in three business days, so Figma to Rolo, three business days.

We'll also do the qa, multiple rounds of revisions and if you like working with that person, , you can just keep working with them. We don't make any money off of it. The next step up is you want to do landing pages and you want a new design, you want someone to write the copy because I think copy's really important and kind of like how you lay out content is really important.

And a lot of times people are like, Hey, I don't have a designer on my team. , or they're just graphic designers. They're not UX designers like, , The pricing for that starts at about five or $600, , total. Again, we don't make any money off of this.

It's just like, , the freelancer will get all of your brand assets. So whether that's like Google Drive or like some photography, they'll look at your current website. , they'll generally schedule like a 30 minute kind of like consulting call with you just to like walk through like how they're thinking about everything.

, five business days, , they'll get the design, they'll get the copy, and they'll get the page done in relo. , and that's, Freaking amazing . The turnaround speed and time there is just like really amazing. I mean, we're trying to keep that bar really high and we have a lot of kind of tools to help our experts as well.

And they have a direct line of access to us for support and things like that. So [00:20:00] around the cloud, we'll be helping them, but that's just like, five, $600. Most people are driving a few thousand dollars minimum , to some of these pages. Some people are driving like millions of dollars to these pages.

Even like a 0.1% conversion rate change is like, instant money back, we have some part agencies building landing pages for, thousands of dollars. On the outset it's like, holy shit, like a thousand dollars, like $2,000.

That's really expensive. If you think about the returns on some of these pages, it's like , the quality of these pages is just like so much higher than, some of our, clients are coming in with. It's like night and day. It's like 1% conversion to like four, five, 6% conversion, and it's like even higher than that.

That makes a huge difference. , but , that's roughly the price point that we're usually trying to

Claus Lauter: get. Okay. I totally agree , that's money well invested. As I said, the conversion rate, if it double your business on the sales for that specific product.

Where can people find out more about relo?

Yuxin Zhu: If you just go to re.app, r e p l o.app, you can fill a form, find one of our experts, we'll get in touch within 24 hours, , or you can just download the app and start playing around with it, , yourself. You try to make it really easy and if [00:21:00] you're, confused or have any questions, like you can always just book a demo with someone on our team , and we're happy to hop on a call and explain everything to you

Claus Lauter: as well.

Excellent. I will put a link in the show notes and you just one click away. Eugene, that was, , very insightful when it comes to, , building things much, much faster and much being more productive was in Shopify. Thanks for being , on the coffee break. Have a great day.

Yuxin Zhu: Thanks for having me on.