female founders

Talk-Commerce-Emily Miethner

Traveling with Cats with Emily Miethner

Have you seen pets on planes? Are you creating connections between your customers? Today we interview Emily Miethner, who is the founder of Travel with Cats.

Emily has built a brand around traveling with cats and a community around cat travel. Emily talks about the ladder of engagement. It doesn’t stop at the sale. She cares about her customers and constantly improves her products to meet her customer’s needs. She started a Travel Cat Summit focused on cat topics, including how to grow your cat’s Instagram account.

Talk-Commerce-Rani Mani

Connect, engage, and grow your community with Rani Mani.

In the last episode of Talk Commerce for 2022, we speak with Rani Mani, the Digital Media Customer Communication Lead at Adobe. We talk about all things community and why some companies get community wrong.

Rani Mani is deeply passionate about making customers successful and harnessing the power of customer feedback to improve the overall customer experience.

Rani does this at scale over social media and is constantly looking at new and exciting ways to pinpoint areas where companies are making it especially difficult to do business with them.

Rani is skilled at working with cross-functional teams across the company to figure out ways of reducing customer effort. In addition to being keenly interested in reducing customer effort, she is equally schooled in strategies for providing exemplary support over social channels and cultivating and nurturing community engagement so the company can be a community-driven business.

Links from the Podcast

https://www.projecthired.org/

https://medium.com/@brentwpeterson/how-i-talked-my-way-into-creativity-eeb1481ebbaa

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this special New Year’s Eve version of Talk Commerce. Today I have Rani Mani. Rani, tell us your role, what you do daily, and maybe one of your passions in life.

Rani: Yeah. Hi Brent. So my day-to-day at Ajovy is telling the story of our individual customers, so predominantly our customers using Creative Cloud. I’m incredibly passionate about doing amazing things in the world just because people are truly changing the world. Adobe happens to power that, so that’s been super satisfying to be a part of.

Brent: We met through the Adobe Insiders Program in 2019. Can you believe that? At the Adobe Summit, right? Or Yes. Yeah. So we met right around that time. And you are no longer with that group, so you’ve moved on to a group, but you’ve so graciously been involved in our little mini insider group that you’ve so kindly come on to the podcast today.

Rani: Oh yes. No, there’s no way that I could be too far away from the group with so many friends, and it’s so much more about the people than anything programmatic about the program. So yeah, I thrill to be here, Brent. 

Brent: Good. Thank you. Before we get into our content, I think one of the things we’re going to talk about is community.

Brent: You have graciously said that you would participate in the #freejokeproject, so I’m just going to tell you a joke, and all you have to do is say, should this joke be free, or can somebody charge for it at some point? All right, here we go. 

Brent:

What's a sea monster's favorite food,  Fish and ships. #FreeJokeProject @ranimani0707 Click To Tweet

Rani: Yeah, I think that should be free, Brent.

Brent: Thanks. I was going to preface it with that. Most of my jokes are not worth saying, but free is very liberal. Thank you so much; all right. Community in our green room, you just mentioned briefly about that it’s sometimes community gets lost and how people do community is lost.

Brent: Can you expand on that? 

Rani: I think people lose sight of the fact that community is all about the individual, right? And what’s in it for them, what makes their heart sing, and how they can band together to support and share with one another. That it’s not meant to be transactional.

Rani: And a lot of companies, and even individuals, even nonprofits that I see trying to rally the community, make it about other things other than the individual. And I often wonder Brent is it not the most obvious thing that the community should be about the people that are in it? And why are we making so much of a big deal around the cause?

Rani: or the corporation or whatever the external thing is, as opposed to diving into the people. Because I feel like once you dive into the people and they are loyalists, and they’re bound to one another, no matter what the thing is, they will stay intact. Which I think is a real testament to how our insider program.

Rani: I could come in and out of it. Adobe may or may not be a part of it, but I feel like that group will forever last. Now the way we’ve set it up, I feel very confident about that because you are all so connected to one another that it’s a real thing of beauty to watch.

Brent: Yeah, I like what you said about not transactional, and I think leaders in positions that look for ROI want to figure out how can this transaction give us value.

Brent: And I think that’s the first mistake anybody would make in building community. Maybe just tell us a little bit more about how you feel and what you think about it being about the person. How focusing on that person helps build community. Cause some might think that’s backward like it should be focused on the community.

Brent: But I agree with you that it is about the people in the community and focusing on each of those. People help the community to become stronger. 

Rani: Yep. I feel like there is no community without the individual, and a community happens to be the sum of multiple individuals. And so, to me, the most basic attack.

Rani: Adam of that community is individual. So I need to not. I need to. I want to focus on who you are, Brent, and what makes you sing, right? What lights you up and what are you trying to do in the world, and how can Adobe and how can I be a part of that? And how can this community assist you in that, right? Like when you start with that premise, it’s a win-win for all.

Rani: But I feel like it’s no different, Brent, than anything in life, right? Whatever it is that you’re doing in life, if you don’t start with the individual and what does success look like to them and what gets them out of bed today, and what are their hopes and dreams like, how are you going to get to the heart of anything if you don’t start at that very basic level of the person?

Brent: The flip side would be that some company wants to create community, and they want the community to be about the company, and then everybody loses focus on the people in it because there’s no common bond between the people. It’s all just the company and the.

Brent: Whatever they’re trying to do is driving that community. Where organically community should be built because people want to participate in it, 

Rani: And the company should and can be a part of it. Like I feel like our Adobe Insiders Group has and will continue to do Somers results for Adobe, right?

Rani: I feel like this group does amazing things on behalf of Adobe and is very quick to defend and promote and all of that, for which Adobe is incredibly grateful. But in the event, Adobe was to ever step out of that community, I really firmly believe that, Because you all have established such a bond, and there are so many connective tissue threads within the group that, it’s really wonderful.

Brent: Part of the way I got into the Adobe community was through Magento, an Adobe acquisition. And I can say that the Magento community operates in a similar fashion, where the community really is the driver of everything around what the corporation would like to see, but there’s no oversight from some big brother saying you as a community have to do this.

Brent: And I like what you said about, they’ll do somersaults over it cuz they’re passionate about what they’re doing right. Like everybody in the community is passionate about some aspect of what they’re in it for, 

Rani: right? Everybody gets something slightly different, and there is no overarching you need to attend this many meetings, and you need to tweet this many times.

Rani: And I very purposely left it that way. Because I just felt like there were many, much bigger things that bound us together as people. That would have a much greater staying power than providing some arbitrary structure like that, 

Brent: Talk a little bit about the difference of how we can help to tell each of our own stories rather than a company story.

Brent: As a community, does it really help the community to tell the story about the company, or does it tell, is it help the community to tell the story about individuals who are in the community?? 

Rani: I don’t see it as a mutually exclusive thing. If you think about it, Brent, our community does both, right?

Rani: Our community gives the name and faith, and personality to the Adobe logo, as you tell different things that you’re doing using Adobe products, it’s your story, but ultimately gets wrapped up into Adobe story as. , right? So I feel like both need to happen for it to be a really compelling, memorable story.

Brent: I can remember in Magento Imagine the last one was 2019 and then the Adobe Summit followed up. But during that, we got Adobe Rush as a free gift for attending blah, blah blah. And I remember sitting there in that Adobe. I attended one of the Adobe Rush specific like there was some kind of a tutorial event or some

Brent: kickoff event and said, Hey, this is what it actually does. And I did CR I, and I remember him creating a short video during the session that said, Hey, I’ve made this while multitasking in my Adobe Rush session on Adobe Rush using Adobe Rush. And then, I published it by the end of the session.

Brent: I think it just, that kind of gives to how we can be passionate about a product and also promote a product while doing a product and sitting in listening about a product. I don’t know where I’m going with this story but was true. It was still fun. 

Rani: Very true. But not all products and services lend itself to that, right?

Rani: Adobe is in an absolutely unique position to have such an iconic brand and so many products that are within the fabric of our culture that, it lends itself to exactly what you’re talking about. 

Brent: It’s not as exciting to say, Hey, I’ve created an integration using Adobe io. While I was doing my Adobe IO session, and now I can, oh my gosh, make AEM talk to joking. 

Rani: Adobe covers, or for the people who are part of what do you call it, washing machines or dryers or, like I, I often, when I first started the group, I was like, this is criminal that I get to do this because, It’s how Adobe set up and what we offer the world, it’s, I feel like people clamor to be a part of it.

Rani: So it’s just, it’s such a natural, dare I say, easy thing to mobilize the community around. 

Brent: If you could speak a little bit to how. How you see the storytelling and if there’s anything different. Is there a magic sauce in the Adobe community, or is it something that is just inherently good because the community is building what the community’s building?

Rani: I think the magic sauce is the people, right? Like the love. If any individual within the group were to pull back or new people came in, the ethos would be different. And that isn’t to say that we don’t always welcome or look for new people, but I think there’s something very special about the existing.

Rani: People within the community and the amount of time you’ve all been together, the kind of hopes and dreams and struggles that you’ve all shared. You’ve been in some of our happy hours, Brent. And we get very up close and personal, right? We’re talking about deaths and marriages and divorces and Custody battles,

Rani: We talk about some really milestone real hearts stringing kind of things, and so that kind of vulnerability and that kind of connection with one another, it’s very much driven by the people.

Brent: The key to a good community is just what you were saying about it’s not just about some one thing that there are so many aspects around that. And we all have our own lives, right? And our own lives contribute to the community.

Brent: And whatever we do in our lives helps to build that community and make it stronger. And then, maybe you could speak a little bit about it. each of us in a community has a strong point. Each of us has one little aspect that adds to it and makes it a really strong community.

Brent: How important do you think the diversity in that community is? 

Rani: When I think about diversity, I think about it more than just ethnic and cultural diversity, right? I’m thinking about it as diversity of thought, diversity of backgrounds. Perspective, and that’s so important because we don’t. How boring would it be if we’re all like one another?

Rani: There have been things brought up and new and innovative ideas that have been offered due to the diversity. And we’ve all benefited from it. That’s why I’m so impressed with you, Brent, that in addition to being a part of the Magento community, you still took that leap of faith and became a part of this community that, at first, I’m sure, felt like a bunch of doorknobs, right?

Rani: Because there was no one. Product or one campaign, or one, anything that bounds us together. I brought a group of people together, and my ultimate question was, are these decent human beings? Oh, and of course, who happens to have a decent social footprint who are doing new and interesting things in the world of digital experiences?

Rani: But my ultimate criteria was, Are these people that I admire enough and feel comfortable enough with that I would invite into my own home and expose my four kids to, right? That was my ultimate criteria. And without exception, every single one of you that’s part of this group, it’s a resounding yes to that.

Rani: And so it’s been a great thing, right? We’ve just got a really good group of people. . Like not just the passion, but the level of goodness of the human being, right? 

Brent: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And for the kid’s thing, I’m worried more about the community members and my kids, like they’re exposed to my kids because, never mind.

Brent: Yeah. Gonna, I was going down the, a bad joke path there, . Yeah. And I guess when I was thinking about diversity, I wasn’t necessarily thinking. Cultural and ethnic, but that is a good part of it. It is important in a community for people to have different strong points.

Brent: And, I’m part of the commerce community, which gives me a different view on things. And now, for me personally, what I’ve learned from, going to the Adobe Summit when it was live in person, but then attending the virtual ones, was that there’s so much more to the whole experience that a customer would have using something like Adobe, you’re using any kind of platform that we can all become better people or even better in our own personal roles that we’re doing because we’re exposed to this diversity in what everybody’s doing.

Brent: So there could be one person who’s marketing, and there’s one person who’s data or commerce or whatever, like we all get together, and we talk. I think that’s as important in that community as the community itself. 

Rani: Yep. No, I agree. I agree. And the ethnic diversity has been a real treat as well because, Adobe really stands for,

Rani: amplifying and elevating the diverse voices that we represent in the community, right? In terms of our customer base. And so that was important to me as well, that we had that right mix of cultural and ethnic diversity within our group because, ultimately, perspective is made up of who you are and where you come from, right?

Rani: And so we, we have a real nice mix of that within our group as well. 

Brent: Yeah, absolutely. And just want to applaud you for helping us to tell our stories in the community. You helped me quite a bit. To be able to tell my story to the community.

Brent: And I think I have a blog post out there somewhere. Anyways, it doesn’t matter. That’s hard to hear. Yes. No, there 

Rani: is. And it was a beautifully done story as well, Brent. In fact, we should link to that from Oh yeah. This podcast so that people can see it because I, and this. The premise of who Adobe is, we believe that everyone has a story to tell.

Rani: And whatever we can as a company, given our products and services, whatever we can do to empower and enable you to tell your story, then we’ve done our job. 

Brent: That’s awesome. Rani, we’re quickly running out of time. I know we wanted to target 10 to 15 minutes. A as we close out the podcast, I give a guest the opportunity to do a shameless plug about anything.

Brent: What would you like to plug today? 

Rani: Yes, I would love to plug a nonprofit organization in the Bay Area by the name of Project Hired. I’m a very proud board member of the organization, and the organization is, Focused on providing advocacy and providing employment services for the disabled community.

Rani: Disabled people makeup one in four people in the world are disabled, and unfortunately, disabled people are woefully underemployed. And so this organization. Provides counseling and guidance and all sorts of services to help individuals with disabilities get employment. I would love for the audience to take a look into Project Hired and participate with them in any which way that you feel inclined.

Rani: Obviously, during the holidays and going into the new year, we’re always looking for donations. And donations don’t always have to be in the form of money. It can be volunteering. It can be if you’re a part of a company that has open jobs that you would like to do some matchmaking with our clients, that would be incredible.

Rani: So many different ways to participate and to give. 

Brent: Yeah. Thank you for that. And incidentally, I just did an interview with a company that does sim something similar. It’s called John’s Crazy Sox, and they hired a disabled individual in there, and I don’t know what the percentage is, but it’s large, that’s one of their missions, and they talked a lot about the mission of whatever the company is, has to reflect what their customers are wanting.

Brent: And I feel as though Adobe does reflect. In itself and with the employees and people like you that help to promote causes like this and help to amplify their voices. Yes. 

Rani: Yes. No, most 

Brent: Definitely. Rani Mani, thank you so much for being here today. It’s been such a pleasure talking to you, and I wish you a very happy New Year.

Rani: Oh, a very happy New Year to you as well, Brent. Thanks for having me.

Brent: You’re welcome.

Talk-Commerce-Lynn Power

Live streaming your CPG with Lynn Power

Is the future of consumer packaged goods live streaming? Lynn Power talks about her brand Masami and how she has gone from start-up to success. Make sure your idea is scalable, and you can see your vision through. Lynn helps us see how CPG is changing and what new brands can and should do in our post-pandemic economy. Think through your brand, your content strategy, and your budget.

https://www.lovemasami.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynn-power-02b8904/

Reef Safe Sunscreen

OLITA Organic Mineral Sunscreen Lotion SPF 30
Talk-Commerce Kelli Williams

Changing the Face of the Marketing Industry with Kelli Williams

Are you a fearless leader? Do you shy away from hard conversations or dive headlong into them? We interview Kelli Williams, who recently took on the Interim CEO role at The BrandLab in Minneapolis. She is changing the face of marketing one person at a time.

Some of the work they do at Brand Labs is what they call fearless work, and it’s all about having fearless conversations. It’s about having conversations that you just started by saying,

“You know what, I have some blind spots. I have some areas of opportunity to learn more to bring additional diverse thinking and to understand areas of bias or areas that I may not be comfortable with so that I can, as a business leader, create opportunities to have conversations and to create safe environments for all people on my team.”

Talk-Commerce-Allie Kern

The Secret Sauce for Improving Customer Experience – Back Office Operations with Allie Kern

Good customer experience is a top priority for any business. It’s the key to driving customer loyalty, acquiring new customers, and, ultimately, improving bottom-line results.

But many businesses overlook that the secret to excellent customer experience lies in back-office operations. By investing in back-office operations and ensuring they are running smoothly, businesses can ensure that customers have a seamless, enjoyable experience – and reap the rewards that come with it.

With the right back-office operations strategy, businesses can create a more connected customer experience, drive customer loyalty, and increase sales. Let’s explore how back-office operations can be used to improve customer experience.

We interview Allie Kern with BrightPearl who helps us understand how an ERP solution like BrightPearl can improve your customer experience.

Learn more about ERP here: What is ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning): What It Is and How It Works

What is an ERP
What is an ERP
Talk-Commerce Megan Blissick

2022 Holiday Season Insights and Shopping Trends with Megan Blissick

It’s Black Friday, and we interviewed Megan Blissick with Signifyd. We talk about BFCM and the Pulse Tracker. Will the predictions be right?

You can listen to some of the numbers Megan gives us and compare them to what is happening! Signifyd’s Holiday Season Pulse Tracker compiles a live look at online sales with real-time adjusted season projections to bring you the fastest, most immediate insights into season performance.

Powered by Signifyd’s Commerce Network, the Holiday Season Pulse Tracker leverages data from thousands of retailers from a variety of verticals around the world.

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce Today, have Megan Blissick. Megan is the head of Global Agency Partnership with Signifyd. Megan, go ahead, introduce yourself. Maybe tell us what you do on a day to day basis and one of your passions in life.

Megan: Ooh, one of my passions was fun. Yeah. Thanks for having mere.

Megan: I’m Megan. I had global agency partnerships at Signifyd e-commerce, fraud prevention and revenue optimization organization. So I’ve been with signify for I think, God, like two and a half years at this point. A lot of experience in the greater e-commerce. E brand management, digital marketing management, and the e-commerce ecosystem up until running partnerships that Signifyd for the past couple of years.

Megan: It’s been a great time. Love it there. And a passion of mine is rock climbing as a lot of folks I believe know at this point. When I’m not at conferences and events, I’m hanging off the side of a cliff .

Brent: And do they call that bouldering?

Megan: Bouldering is when there’s no ropes, but

Brent: Oh, so you don’t do that part?

Megan: No I get all the way up the top yeah, I get to get some really cool views up there.

Brent: I’m assuming you’ve seen the movie where the guy climbs El Capita, Is it called Free?

Megan: Yes I’ve seen a couple of those

Brent: movies. Any aspirations to do free solo for that one?

Megan: No.

Brent: I got super creeped out just watching that movie.

Megan: I definitely enjoy the rope element of rope climbing. I do that part where you fall and you don’t die. . Yeah.

Brent: That’s always a plus, right? Yeah. Cause in that movie, somebody did one of his friends died, I think.

Megan: It’s it can get really intense in the climbing world, but but me and my buddies we like to play it safe.

Brent: Yeah. Good. Before we get into content and after, now we’ve talked about rock climbing. Yes. I do have a project that’s called The Free Joke Project. Okay. And what I’d like to do is just tell you a joke and you can tell me if you think it should continue to be free. Or if we could charge for the joke.

Brent: Okay, here we go. Here we go.

Brent: I was trying to figure out why the ball kept getting bigger and bigger. Then it hit me,

Megan: Is this how this whole podcast is gonna go ?

Brent: Yes. All right. Since you were so good at that one, I’m gonna tell you one more and then we’ll move on

Megan: since, give me one more. Let’s go for it.

Brent: I entered 10 puns into a contest to see which one would win, no pun in 10 did.

Brent: Oh God.

Megan: How long are we doing this ?

Brent: We got another half an hour.

Brent: Okay, let’s go for it. Let’s go to, let’s go to real things now. Yeah. Commerce protection platform. Tell us about that. Yeah. In our green room, we talked about Signifyd being this fraud thing and we fraud protection, at least in my mind. And that’s what I thought about it, but it’s so much more.

Brent: So tell us, give us a little background.

Megan: Yeah. Okay, Brent, you and I have been working together the whole time I’ve been at Signifyd and you’ve actually been working with us longer than I’ve been around. So when Signifyd started, we were actually a fraud scoring tool. So what that really means is when a customer goes to a website they hit the checkout button and

Megan: we gather a lot of information about that customer based on not only the website they’re checking out on, but any other website within Signifyd network. That way if it’s the first time they’re at, REI buying a climbing rope but they’ve already gone to Moose Jaw and they’ve already bought some Caravaners we already understand a little bit about that customer more than the merchant on hand.

Megan: So that lets us make a better decision about whether or not that’s a legitimate customer. What we started realizing was, as we’re doing this scoring we are getting really strong scores getting better information than our merchants so that we could really provide them that value, but, They weren’t always taking us up on it.

Megan: So we started actually guaranteeing on our orders. So saying, Yes, we think this is a really good purchase. We think this person is correct. There may be, a couple things that look weird. They may be shipping it out of state, or the recipient doesn’t have the same last name. But ultimately we have enough data to stand behind this.

Megan: So we started adding a financial guarantee, and that’s where g. Fraud protection came from. So we said if we’re wrong and if it is fraud signify will pay the merchant back in full cost of product shipping, taxes, fees. And that really took us into another world of e-commerce fraud prevention, because what that did was not only prevent fraud, but we started actually increasing revenue and increasing order approval rate for our customers.

Megan: So we saw that. Getting rid of the fear of fraud, we are actually able to enable more transactions to go through. That really opened a door for our customers to see five to 7% revenue lift just by taking in more orders that they were at first afraid were fraud. So that really changed the conversation for us.

Megan: We are preventing fraud, but we’re really driving most of our value by driving more revenue. So we started looking. Further down in the conversation, what happens once that product gets there? Does the product arrive or does the merchants still have to pay for an item not received claim where they delivered the product got there, but the customer never got it.

Megan: So sometimes, that’s true. We’ve seen porch pirates especially talking to the holiday season. This is something that. It’s unfortunate, but it’s true. People steal things off of porches. I’m sure you’ve seen some of those Ring doorbell videos. But sometimes a customer does get their product and they say they didn’t.

Megan: A merchant busy during the holiday season doesn’t really have time to look into all those claims. They don’t want to insult their customers that are legitimate and are good and are missing their products. So they’re taking a hit there. Signify said, continue down the funnel. Let’s cover item not received claims significantly, not subscribed, subscription cancellations like cancellation errors, order shipping fees.

Megan: So we started really enhancing our commerce protection from just that point of sale, continuing down the funnel. Now Signifyd hosts a variety of different products through our three main modules through our agent console, where you can really tailor your different policies and your orders through insights reporting where you can really understand your customers better.

Megan: And through our decision center, which is, our core product of yes or no, are these orders being approved or not? That allows us to hit into a couple different categories past the traditional fraud prevention chargeback recovery, account takeover protection, author off rate optimization pre off acceptance.

Megan: You’re not paying those credit card fees anymore. Along with that that core of products. So at this point, yeah, signify covers our merchants end to.

Brent: And we talked earlier that right now it’s before Black Friday, but this episode’s not gonna come until after Black Friday. . So you do have something new called a, or maybe it’s not super new, but a sales prediction tool or sales tracking tool.

Brent: Tell us a little bit about that and how that’s gonna play into the holidays. .

Megan: Yes. So this is actually a continuous project that I’ve absolutely loved. It’s been part of Signifyd since I started right at the beginning of the pandemic. When we, we sit right in that payment gateway. We get to see real time transaction data across over 6,000 different merchants in hundreds of different products categories.

Megan: So what that really gives us is a chance. Look at real time e-commerce data. So actually just today we launched our 2022 holiday season insights and shopping trends. So as things happen in real time, we’ll be able to track. Our holiday season projections against what’s actually happening this holiday season.

Brent: All right. Then I’ll make sure, I’ll put all that on the show notes that they can get the link to the report and they can look at it. You had mentioned some things that, that we’re looking at in. The holidays. Can you give us any insights that we might see for Black Friday? And I guess we’re gonna know if you’re right or wrong for Black Friday after this, but we still have Christmas, Hanukkah coming up in Yes.

Brent: As we go forward.

Megan: Absolutely. So we have. Three categories right now of holiday season predictions. We have one on total holiday spend. We have one on product volume, how much is actually going to be purchased, and then we have some cyber week predictions. So I think we touched on this in the green room.

Megan: The the holiday season is not Black Friday anymore. Between pandemic, e-commerce penetration and everything in between. Shoppers are buy. Gifts whenever they want, and and merchants are really catering to that. I think Amazon has two prime days now, or a special exclusive event coming up.

Megan: There’s already holiday sales at some of the major big box retailers. The the holiday shipping window and the holiday returns window has already started where there’s usually extended return windows so that people can buy gifts and then return them once they’ve been gifted and and not received kindly.

Megan: So there’s really a huge window of holiday shopping now. It’s not. Like that small peak that happens in that one week of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and then again in that like Christmas and Hanukkah weeks. It’s really starting now and it’s going to continue until the shipping cutoffs occur in the end of December.

Megan: So we’ve got a long holiday season coming

Brent: up. Yeah, And it’d probably go all the way to July if Amazon takes us there. And then it’ll start again right after July. That’s when the pre-Christmas sales will start. Soon. You had mentioned in the greenroom as well about how you’ve extended, so traditionally Signifyd was that sort of right before the payment happens.

Brent: But now you’re extending it down the funnel even past into the delivery cycle. Tell. Where you see the biggest value for a merchant as you get through that. Let’s just say they, they, that is, it’s a client that, that makes it through or isn’t, It’s a valid client, but , it’s somebody that is trying to gain the system by saying something, I didn’t get something.

Brent: How does Signifyd help there?

Megan: Yeah. Item not received is a really interesting category. As Brent, I live in Brooklyn. I’ve had a couple packages stolen off my doorstep. It happens, there’s a, a couple of my friends happens to it too. But there’s also those merchants or those customers that, they say that they didn’t receive a product when they did.

Megan: So that becomes an item not received claim. There’s a couple ways that merchants, if they’re handling this on their own, they can deal with. You might have seen some of the backlash of some of these come up before. For example, on Amazon, if you claim too many items, so it’s not received in a six month window then you’ll start getting a flag of you must provide proof or, like you can’t return any items for the next like couple months.

Megan: Things like that. You can’t make this claim anymore. So there’s that volume approach, right? If it’s the, if then approach of binary rules, if someone returns X amount of items and y months reject. We all know that any binary system is just right for fraud. It’s very simple. If someone can figure out, Oh, I can return four items but not five, or I can return.

Megan: $200, but not 201. Then they’re going to push right up to the boundaries, create another account, anything like that. So there’s always a way to get around those binary rules. You’re also, if you’re managing things on your own, you’re risking an insult rate. And I will tell you there are. Vengeful customers that will let you know if you’ve wronged them.

Megan: We’ve seen them all online, if it, And it’s a terrible customer experience, right? So if I ordered something I was really excited about I get the notification while I’m out at work that, a package arrived at my door and then I go home and that package isn’t there.

Megan: You, you first have that sinking feeling and then, Text your neighbors. You ask if anyone else picked it up or saw it. You wait another day and see if the the shipping thing was just wrong and they hadn’t gotten there yet. And then you ultimately contact the company and say, Hey, I never received my product.

Megan: If they come back to you and say, Hi, we think you’re lying and you’re not getting your product or your money going to raise hell and high water. All over anywhere you can post a review or rating online. There’s a lot of places to do that. So you risk really insulting those good customers because that might also be a really high value customer.

Megan: It can be someone that’s shopping with you guys once a month that is going to go to your competitor and never go back again and actively discourage people from shopping on that site. So what signify does is, first and foremost, if you have our INR coverage, we reimburse our merchants. We say, We got it.

Megan: Don’t worry about it. That’s ours now. So our customers are taken care of immediately. We now also have an internal chargeback recovery team. So they will go and they will investigate that claim. They’ll investigate all claims that they think that there is a reason to look into and will go all the way through the entire process and order flow to figure out if that product actually did get to the intended recipient.

Megan: We’ve had some very funny ways that we found people and we actually now have made that into another series called Crime and Cocktails where every couple months we sit down in a webinar setting and we talk about some of the some of the fraud that we’ve seen in the industry where we actually catch some people that are claiming that they never receive their.

Megan: $5,000 Rolex, but they’re wearing it in their picture, on their Facebook profile. Or where someone says that they never got their above ground pool, but we find it on Google Maps. So we actually get to cover what really goes into some of these fraud attempts and how our teams are able to, trace back the entire supply chain to really find if these are legitimate customers.

Brent: Yeah. That takes a lot of tpa to claim a lost pool, but then set up the pool in your yard. My, I still love that one. . Yeah. My experience recently has been, I received a package from Amazon that was empty and it was also. Point zero one ounces, . So it clearly got through everything. And then Anne got the weight onto shipping and they shipped it.

Brent: It was just a, it was an envelope, but it was supposed to have some clothes in it, huh? And zero weight as well. I didn’t even have to argue with Amazon. They just sent me the new item. But I suppose as a consumer, if you get an, and it was a, one of those envelopes from Amazon that had the, and it wasn’t even sealed yet, so somehow nobody put the thing in it.

Brent: They just sent it to shipping, ran through their UPS thing, and then off to ship. But it’s not, I suppose too, as a consumer, you, if for whatever reason you get the couple of those in a row, you want to make sure. Back yourself up with your ring and all this other fun stuff. You. So I think you mentioned returns.

Brent: How do you go farther besides just the lost packages? Do you go into returns as well?

Megan: Yeah, and that’s actually, I’m glad you brought that up. That’s probably what I consider the most exciting opportunity space is especially going into the holiday season this year. We all know that e-commerce returns happen, but we all pretend like they don’t

Megan: And the really, the biggest bummer of it all is that it’s a much higher rate than in-store returns. Take fashion as a category in-store returns average around 10% of retail sales. eCommerce averages around 30%. And that’s really hard. Especially right now, we’re not in the best spot in the there’s an economic downturn.

Megan: We’re all aware of it. People are still buying, people are still shopping. When you’re really counting on sales and business and 30% of that is coming back in the door. That’s a big hit because that’s merchandise that was off the floor that couldn’t be sold. That’s also merchandise that gets damaged.

Megan: In return, about 25% of returned merchandise goes straight to a landfill. And, that’s just devastating both for the environment and for a retailer’s bottom line. And then seasonal items get marked down. Okay, return that fake Christmas tree, but you can’t sell that again until next year.

Megan: So now you’re sitting. Dead inventory and there’s a lot of companies that are popping up to really start solving returns. It’s making me really happy. Signifyd is partnering with a couple of those to be displayed soon. But what we’re also doing, and the reason that we’re really showing up in that space is actually in terms of, the consumer experience.

Megan: Returns is a one size fit all approach right now, and it’s probably the last thing in the customer journey that applies that. We have loyalty programs that incentivize good customers. We have tailored experiences so that if you have a certain IP address, then you land on a different website version on a homepage than someone else.

Megan: But why are we all doing the same thing when it comes to returns? It’s this blanket return policy of. 30 days or free shipping or something like that. When in reality our good customers should have the benefits of good returns and our abusive customers shouldn’t be able to return things at all.

Megan: Because you know that’s not a customer that you really want shopping on your site. It doesn’t matter if they spend a thousand dollars. If they return that a thousand dollars and end up costing you $300 along the way, that’s not a good customer. So what signify does now is we have a returns abuse api.

Megan: So what that allows us to do is actually take control. That customer return journey if they go on that. So say you put us in place right now. Holiday season has started. We’re getting all these orders in. Again the benefit of signify that’s. That powers everything is our commerce network. We work with so many brands around the world that we’re able to see 98% of online consumers.

Megan: So if you’ve shopped online you’ve probably shopped at a Signifyd store, which means that we know you. And that can be really good because if you’re a good customer and we’re using a merchant that’s going to say, Okay, we’re gonna prioritize our VIPs. Has a rewards account with us.

Megan: Anyone that’s been a customer for more than three years, you can set all of these rules yourself and say, Megan’s a good customer. She spends over a thousand dollars a year with us. If she initiates a return, immediately refund the money to her account before she even returns the product. Send a prepaid shipping label so that make it really easy on her to send that out.

Megan: Ask if she needs a box or. A mailer or an envelope and send that as well and, make that friction point that’s happening. Cuz no one wants a re I don’t wanna return a product. I didn’t buy it to give it back. But make that friction point something that’s really exciting for your customer.

Megan: Wow, that was incredibly easy. I’m going to buy from here because if something goes wrong, I know they have. So treat your good customers really well. And then, over here, Brent, you’re just returning everything you buy. You’re just, buying it to use it once and then put it back in the box and who cares if it’s broken?

Megan: You’ll just say it arrived that way and then shipping it right back. For customers that are doing, abusive behavior with your products, you can limit them. You can make their order final sale. You can, make it that they have to pay for return shipping. And they don’t get their refund until the item has been inspected back in the warehouse.

Megan: And then everyone else somewhere in between. So what we can really do with actually taking control of returns and looking at different customers, setting these different policies can ultimately create a really strong customer experience for your best customers and can shut out those serial abusers and just get them off of your site.

Brent: Yeah, and to be fair, it’s only because people keep buying me hair care products, but I keep returning them for gifts. It’s not that I’m trying to do it, it’s just that I can’t use it for anything. I guess I could re-gift it. That’s a good idea. You could re-gift it. . We have a couple, we have a little bit of time left and I got thinking that that, let’s put this episode live on Black Friday.

Brent: So let’s just say somebody is sitting there on Black the day after Thanksgiving still sort of stuff, Turkey, and they’re like, Oh, I’m gonna listen to a podcast. Oh, there’s a new episode out. What do you think that, And they’re gonna be shopping as a, as a. It’s too late to do something then. But as a as a shopper, is there ways to figure out, I don’t know how to say with that.

Brent: Is there is there trusted brands that you know that are gonna be a good brand to go to? Or is it is it just the typical trust that you have from a merchant or for the merchant and then as a merchant, this is a better question. As the merchant, before we get to Christmas, is it too late to add Signifyd?

Brent: I.

Megan: Not at all. If you’re a merchant that’s already using Signifyd you can effectively turn on something like our returns of use API or add in any of these additional layers of protection. If you’re not already using Signifyd any major e-commerce platform we’re already pre-built into.

Megan: Adobe Commerce, Shopify Plus Salesforce Big Commerce. Neva, NetSuite, V tags all the good guys. And then, if we don’t have something built, we have we have APIs that connect in to everybody. If you’re working with an amazing agency like Magento they can get you set up and running and really quickly and, just start protecting your orders.

Megan: Start, especially when it comes to these big swings and volume. You don’t have the manpower to be manually reviewing all these fringe cases, especially when it’s 100, 200% the regular daily volume. Having a product like this in place, it’s quick to put in. And it’s quite effective, I would say, especially for the holidays.

Brent: Yeah. I always like to tell the story that we started in Mexico selling e-commerce in 2014 and one of our first clients had a call center that they literally called every client that put an order in cuz they were worried it could be a fraud client. . So they had, 20 or 30 people in a big room that would just make phone calls all day to confirm.

Brent: So that’s a lot of manpower. Yeah. From a volume standpoint, how much that, let’s think how much you can help something like Signifyd and help. And it’s almost at this point, it’s a necessity, isn’t it? Because if you think about the cost to the cost of returns and the cost of fraud and all those things that are around that this is something that is not just an insurance and doing that, but it’s also, I think you had mentioned a couple times just improving the customer journey.

Brent: Yeah. And improving the experience of the customer. And then for, from the merchant side, knowing that the customers are good is always a better way to do

Megan: business. Yeah. There’s a lot more trust in the entire transaction. And you’re right, it is essential because especially right now oh, a lot of companies are having a hard time and have big numbers to hit.

Megan: There’s, you can’t afford to turn down your best customers, so if someone’s hitting the buy button, that’s the highest intent they can really show you. And we can’t afford to turn away four or 5% of those customers because of the fear of fraud. So that’s ultimately how I always see it, is, let those good customers through and, Let them through that first time and they’ll come back, especially if they have a good experience end to end.

Brent: All right. A couple minutes left here. Megan’s prediction on the holidays what do you think we’re gonna be

Megan: doing? All right, so we’ve. Thing. So going back to those three categories, this is what what the amazing team had Signifyd. I had nothing to do with these numbers, but we have an incredible data team.

Megan: So they were really able to pull some of these insights based on what we’ve been seeing over the past, oh gosh, 24 months of eCommerce trends. Our first prediction is that cyber week growth is going to increase by 5% year over year. So we think there’s still gonna be a lot of volume, but we don’t think it’s all going to come from cyber week.

Megan: We’re predicting an 8% increase in November and December is total rise in terms of that product volume. We’ve been seeing people buying more recently, which is, it’s still haven’t figured things out in terms of the economy. I’m not even going to pretend to try, but we’re predicting an 8% change in volume of products sold in cyber week and a 5% overall volume in November and December.

Megan: We think people are still just buying more, but ultimately that cyber week, we think it’s gonna be down from last year. We think there’ll. 19% of holiday sales versus 21% of holiday sales last year. So people are spreading out their purchases, they’re starting earlier, they’re shopping later.

Megan: As more companies adopt better transition, better solutions they’re able to extend their shipping windows because, they’re not doing that manual review in house anymore, they’re able to actually approve and process orders faster. So they’re able to accept orders longer into the holiday season.

Megan: Yeah, we think it’s a wider range. People are buying earlier, they’re planning ahead. But there’s still going to be a lot of consolidation in Black Friday, Cyber Monday.

Brent: Yeah. And I think overall I was at the econ forum here in Minneapolis a couple weeks ago, and they gave out some numbers that said, E even though it seems like we’re going into a downturn, We’re coming off of such a hot cycle through the pandemic.

Brent: Everybody had to order online. Yeah, that online is still gonna grow even next year. It’s gonna grow 20% over the year before. It won’t grow 50 or whatever that number was. Maybe it was 10%. Anyways, it’s gonna be a good healthy growth in online no matter what over the year. And so people are still shifting from retail to.

Brent: Online, maybe not even, Or even buying more in the future. Yeah. And that as a merchant, you need to always pay attention to where your customers are buying from and where they’re gonna buy more from. Yes. So that cycle and reducing some of that friction in the. And the checkout and making sure that it’s a quality customer is such a important part of things.

Megan: Yeah. It’s really important. And those customers show up everywhere. They’re showing up online and then they’re returning in store, or they’re window shopping online, and then they’re making a final decision. It’s really important to meet that customer where they are, treat them the same.

Megan: Everywhere that you find them and make sure that they have the best experience with your brand.

Brent: Megan, as they close out the podcast, I get everybody a chance to do a shameless plug. , what would you like to plug today?

Megan: Oh gosh. Am I not plugged enough? I feel like it’s been most of us .

Brent: You can plug anything you want.

Brent: You could plug your climbing. Should I plug rock climbing?

Megan: Oh my, yes. Yeah. Anything you want. No, I would absolutely love to plug the incredible marketing team here because all these insights, all these analytics, all this data it’s, all of my partners know this. It’s something I talk about far too much, but, we have a incredible team of really talented and really thoughtful marketing folks that have really enabled Signifyd partnerships continuously.

Megan: We’re able to create really incredible content. It’s actually thought provoking. I hate how many times I even said pandemic in this presentation. They’re really able to bring this information to the table in a way that’s digestible, easy to use and easy to explain. That’s that’s my plug is when you have a great marketing team, let the entire world know

Brent: As, so we’re gonna close out now, but since it is Black Friday today, and we don’t know if I’m actually gonna get it done by it, but it’s gonna, we’re gonna assume that I have it done already and it is Black Friday. What should I go out or What are you gonna go by on Friday? Black Friday and I’m gonna be in the air, so I won’t be able to buy anything.

Brent: What are you gonna buy on Black Friday?

Megan: What am I gonna buy on Black Friday? You’re gonna laugh at me, but I really want a nice two person tent because I only have a one person tent right now and it’s very tiny.

Brent: Is your two person tent, the kind that sits on the side of a rock face?

Megan: No, but I hang, give you a little education that is called a portal ledge.

Megan: Oh, Portal ledge. Like a portable ledge. Yeah. Very cool. So now you’ve got a cool little lingo term for next time you’re out rock climbing or summiting, lcap .

Brent: Absolutely. Okay. If you don’t get your 2% in, then for the holidays, you’ll want one for a gift.

Megan: Yes. Any, anyone that’s listening that wants to send me a tent, I’m sure you can just provide my information in the comments, . All right,

Brent: perfect. Megan Bick is the head of Global Agency Partnerships With Signifyd. Thank you so much for being here today.

Megan: Thanks for your time, Fred. Always great to see you.

Brent: All right.

Talk Commerce Dina Buchanan

Outsource your Inbound Marketing with Dina Buchanan

It’s getting more and more challenging to hire a great salesperson. Getting those leads, getting that person to make phone calls, getting inbound leads through anything, LinkedIn, social media, paid ads. It’s all a hard slog. We interview Dina Buchanan, who has a guaranteed formula for a fantastic return on investment.

In 14 words or less, Dina can help you gain hundreds of high-end leads and clients monthly from LinkedIn.

She allows you to focus on selling and scaling instead of failing at marketing. Dina will help you to eliminate the stress. Of wondering where your following clients are coming from. Dina shows us the positive side of outsourcing your inbound leads and getting more business.

Talk-Commerce Kaus Manjita

No-Code Commerce with Kaus Manjita

Businesses are going online daily worldwide, and it’s getting easier. But running their businesses requires constant two-way communication with users and customers across channels 24/7, year-round. @kmanjita

Today we interview Kaus Manjita with Mason. Kaus is a no-code evangelist, content nerd, and serial product builder. You’ll find her amid entrepreneurs, brand builders, developers, marketers, and designers over Zoom on Hangouts and on this podcast today.

Mason is Zapier made for commerce. It connects data designs and channels to run your product launches, sales documents, discounts, inventory updates, custom reviews in-app, help, funnels, and more, all on autopilot.

Talk-Commerce Nicole Hamilton

Wealth and Homeownership with Nicole Hamilton

In interviews with homeowners, 25% say they bought their home first for an investment and second for a place to live. The other 75% say they bought a house simply as a place to live with little expectation for it to be a good investment. You grow wealth through homeownership.

Nicole Hamilton has made a career of helping others with home ownership. She explains REAFE in detail. A Real Estate Asset and Financing Evaluation is about maximizing the returns you get from your real estate.

Her tip for the episode is to think twice if you want to refinance. If you refinance with less than half the time on your mortgage, you start over with your interest payments!

Show Notes

Personal: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoleh

Company:

https://www.instagram/homeowner.ing

https://www.facebook.com/homeownering

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGegoDlazIT6OZTQBCba4cw

Roger Brown

https://www.mathestate.com/


Here are more links that might be of interest to listeners:


A product for people who want to plan for Homeownership: https://www.homeownering.com/the-formula-steps-to-becoming-a-homeowner/

And this is about the financial, real estate analysis I do: https://www.homeownering.com/reafe/

Here is a free equity report we have on our site: https://www.homeownering.com/free-home-equity-report/

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Nicole Hamilton. She is the CEO of Homeowner. Nicole, go ahead, introduce yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions in 

Nicole: life. Oh, okay. It’s great to be here, Brent. I’m an entrepreneur in the housing industry. I have a company called Homeowner.

Nicole: It’s very pro home ownership and treating your real estate with the same care that you do your other investments. I’ve had other companies in the sector. I’d say the common thread through all of my ventures is an obsession with real estate, finance mortgages, Home equity appreciation.

Nicole: Home is an investment home ownership and intergenerational wealth. My current company home owning. Is dedicated to getting people into home ownership and then getting them good financial outcomes. So it spans the the life cycle of home ownership from buying utilizing and improving your financial situation through home ownership.

Nicole: And then, selling. and my passion, I guess one of my passions right now is weightlifting, . I go really into it. 

Brent: Wow. That’s great. Yeah. I definitely need to get more into Weightlift as I’m getting older, I realize that my upper body, I run every day, but my upper body is definitely neglected, especially over time and it, I think as we get into our fifties, which I am, you are it’s harder to gain.

Brent: On your upper bodies, you have to work twice as hard as if we were in our twenties. Anyways, we can, we’ll keep moving out along there, but that’s awesome. That’s good to know. I’ve heard more and more people talking about that, yeah. Alright, so before we jump into our content I have a thing called the free joke project, hashtag free joke.

Brent: And I’m just gonna tell you a joke and all you have to do is tell me if it should be free or if we could charge for it. Do I have to? You do not have to laugh. I would appreciate real real feedback on it. All right. But they’re all fantastic jokes. All right, Ready? Okay. My doctor just diagnosed me with a severe lack of awareness.

Brent: It came out of nowhere.

Nicole: Free . 

Brent: Alright. Super

Brent: Thank 

Nicole: you. I actually love, another patch of mine actually is standup comedy. Oh, wow. All right. I will listen to any standup comedy. Yeah, so I, I’m interested in the free joke project and I hope to follow that hashtag and learn more. 

Brent: Yes. I’ve started publishing on Twitter art on On TikTok, Sorry.

Brent: Sometimes they’re on Twitter, but they’re all on TikTok on my Brent w Peterson TikTok channel Anyways. Free hashtag free joke project. Great. So Nicole homeowner I’m I’m also a homeowner and always interested in the subject. Tell us about how you got into it and what was your journey getting there?

Nicole: Yeah I guess the way I got there was Earlier in my career I was a science major and then I went into technology. And then I got very interested in how technology can make people’s lives better. I know sometimes it makes people’s lives worse, but I know that, for me it was, how can I apply this to really helping people?

Nicole: And then the recession in 2008, housing crisis hit, and I really wanted. Help solve a problem. The problem being that a lot of people got loans that they couldn’t necessarily understand were afford, and that caused a lot of foreclosures and immense pain for economic pain, for many millions of Americans.

Nicole: And so I started a company called Tactile Finance. Tactile Finance, Pronunciation. Pronunciation it. And that was a sort of visualization product for banks to use with their clients or non-profits to use with their clients. And it just provided transparency into the market. And that’s where I got super into the math and.

Nicole: And the consumer need and the consumer approach to housing finance. So it’s been about a 12, 12 year journey to where I am now. Which I would say, I wound that company down in 2015, 16, 2016. And it ran its course and I realized that I really wanted to focus on the consumer, not the inter, B2B business, but focusing on the consumer and the consumer needs.

Nicole: And so I think that journey just gave me a lot of insight. I understand, the, a more sophisticated picture. I understand the bank’s motivation. I understand the role of the non-profits, I understand the mortgage industry as a. . And then I guess one of my superpowers is to take really complicated information and make it digestible for people and an enzyme

Nicole: So that’s where my real passion for homeowner came, which is there’s all this sophisticated knowledge out there, but like people. Regular people like you and me can use it to better their situation and understand the complicated aspects of owning a home, selling a home equity, and things like that actually make an enormous impact on your, ultimate net worth.

Brent: Yeah, I think do. So going back, starting with people with on their first home, how do you help them past rent and getting into their first home? What, Do you have a formula or do Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. 

Nicole: It’s an excellent question. Brent . So I actually have a product, it’s called the Formula, and it’s on our website and it’s like $20.

Nicole: It’s very inexpensive and it’s a system which basically gives you. The ability to see all the diff it’s all the different criteria to be a homeowner. So there’s a lot of different known loans and qualifications to get a loan, and it lets you see where you are in relation to those criteria now, and then plot your way to the quickest, most effective path to being a home.

Nicole: So I’ll just give you an example. If you’re refinancing a house or buying a house the lo what the loan officer is doing in the background is they’re trying to fit you in this formula. It’s called a dti, debt to income ratio. And that’s a blah, blah, blah, gobbly go, industry language, but ultimately they’re taking all the aspects of your financial picture.

Nicole: And they’re trying to fit it into a way in which the bank will say, Brent, you can get this mortgage. But all of that is very opaque to a home buyer. And what this does is it just gives you that information that you can see exactly what criteria they’re using, and there’s ways that you can adjust your goals.

Nicole: If your income is too low and your debt is too. Then the house that you can qualify for is gonna be lower, right? So it’s this formula that you massage and say, Okay, over 12 months, if I can reduce my debt by X and let’s say I pick a house price of, 350,000 then I can get to that goal.

Nicole: That’s a achievable goal for me. Whereas if you don’t have that information, you’re just like, Oh no, poor me. I can’t afford a home. So it’s just empowering people. A lot of people get left out of the housing, out of the home, out of home ownership because they lose faith and they don’t know how they’re gonna get from point A to point B.

Nicole: The real issue is that how, being a homeowner is is a known wealth builder, especially for the middle class. And letting more people get into home ownership is incredibly important. I A lot of, public policies are designed around that. So it’s just like a way to distill this information.

Nicole: Create a plan for yourself and be able to actually see how you can get to that goal. So that’s one of the things that kind of came out of, all this work that I’ve done in the last 12 years is how to make information that’s known in the industry, known by, other people. So it can empower.

Brent: Do you feel as though now what? Home ownership got more difficult after 2008 and are banks getting better at helping people to get into home ownership now compared to right after the crash, the home crash? 

Nicole: I think what the crash did is it changed a lot of laws, like the dod Frank laws.

Nicole: It made lending. It made it, it made a lot of good things happen in the industry that prevent consumers from being taken advantage of. So that, I think, was a net positive for everyone, including the banks. In a lot of ways. It made lending safer. It also, we know that we’ve been through very, up until recently, a very, a period of historically low interest rates.

Nicole: We’re not in that right now, hopefully we will be again, sometime I. Yeah, so obviously that made it easier for people to purchase homes and it also drove home prices up too with, demand and everything like that.

Brent: I think my first home was in the nineties and it was, I think we got an arm.

Brent: Or if a five year fix with an arm after. Something like that. Yeah. And at the time it was like 9% interest or something like that, but with the arm it brought it down or something. I don’t know. How you, do you have a formula me, to help people through that? Because I know like my friends in England where every mortgage is an arm and now they’ve said their payments have doubled all of a sudden because of that adjustable rate.

Nicole: Yes. So arms are, I had an. It’s arms, A lot of mortgage people actually get arms, seven year arms and things like that because the interest rate is low in the beginning. But it’s contingent upon the idea that you’re gonna be able to refinance out of that into a better rate. So it’s a, it’s a. So there there’s some risk in that, that you just really need to know what it is. And I actually made a video it’s on my website, but it explains exactly what an arm is. It doesn’t have a lot of viewers cuz a lot of people don’t know, don’t necessarily wanna follow through the whole five minutes.

Nicole: But I do have a video about product, a product review of. Of a ShopVac that, that hits 35,000 views. But the arm video is not as popular as the ShopVac video. . 

Brent: Yeah, I have some Jack Russell videos that are far more popular than any videos that I can post on YouTube. So I think it is funny what people tend to watch.

Brent: Alright, so back to finance. If so, one of the hard parts as an entrepreneur, Is getting a mortgage. One of the easy parts before 2008 as an entrepreneur was a stated income mortgage, which they don’t do anymore. How do you have do you have specific help for self-employed people as they’re trying to get a mortgage?

Brent: And maybe is there a certain amount of time that you have to either show a W2 or show your tax returns to a. 

Nicole: Yeah, so there’s rules for, so there’s, yeah there’s rules for mortgages. Usually the rule is for W two s is you have to show two years of your income. And it’s two years is really a rule too for business income.

Nicole: So a lot of banks will have you submit. Whatever structure your business is. If you’re, if you’re an LLC or whatever, then you submit that income, to the mc if you’re not getting a paycheck, if you’re taking a draw from the company. So there’s different ways to do it but you touched on a really important thing, which is that, for entrepreneurs, it can be d.

Nicole: If you’re in any of these categories or let’s say an Uber driver, you’re getting income from all these different places and you don’t have a w2, there are formulas that banks use to assess what your income is. So it doesn’t mean that you can’t get a loan. But in business the one thing about business income is that they wanna see that it’s going.

Nicole: So , if you have a year that, you know, so that can be a factor, right? If you have a, if you have, 2021 was a good year and 2022 is a bad year, but 2023 is gonna be a better year. There’s some ease of, getting a loan if you’re showing that your business is improving.

Nicole: And there’s also. There’s always leeway too with in the, these areas where you have to interpret, whether something is improving or not improving. There’s always you can ask for, the manager above the loan officer to take a look at it and see if, if you can submit more documentation.

Nicole: Or provide more information about the industry that you’re in. I know that during the recess, sorry, the pandemic, restaurants, restaurant owners, weren’t a great bet, right? So there’s some industries that really suffer, from declined if you’re getting business income from that.

Nicole: But there’s ways that you can, the more you know about it, the more you can help yourself. Just like anything. . 

Brent: Yeah. Especially I think as an entrepreneur, that’s the hardest part is maybe, and I think it’s even harder as a young entrepreneur. So if, let’s just say you’re in your twenties, you’ve started a business and you’re trying to navigate that process of your first purchase because you don’t have a w2 is it better to go to a big bank or a small bank?

Brent: as a new home buyer or as an entrepreneur? Does it 

Nicole: matter? I think it’s great to really go to a lot of different types, so I always recommend that people also put a mortgage broker in the mix. , because they have a access to many different types of loans. If you go to a bank they’ll have their own products, but if you go to a broker, they’ll be able to search more broadly and find banks that are more suitable for your particular situation.

Nicole: So it’s just good like anything else to shop around. 

Brent: Do you ever talk to people about maybe a sec or investment home or a second home, or somebody that’s buying a home just for Airbnb? 

Nicole: So one of the things that home honoring does, which I got into lately, which I think is a really important aspect of investment finance, which is neglected by wealth managers for the most part is analyzing properties for their long term investment potential.

Nicole: in the case of, if you’re someone who’s not getting a mortgage just to get the lowest monthly rate, which is most of us, right? We don’t want to spend a penny more than we need to on our housing, cuz we have a lot of other expenses. But for a lot of people, they do have a little discretion in how they structure their financ.

Nicole: And you can structure it in a way that gives you, a better return based on your goals, on your investment goals. So one of the things that we offer is a, they call it the reef, which is a real estate analysis. It’s like a financial analysis. So in that case, you’re looking at your current houses, if you have more than one or just one, what the financing is, which your overall goals.

Nicole: And then coming up with different scenarios that could, maximize your, the goal that you’re looking for, whether it’s putting more money in play, whether it’s reducing all your expenses, whether it’s looking to buy a second home, whether it’s looking to buy a home for rental purposes, things like that.

Nicole: It’s a financial investment analysis. And I think, too few people go through those steps to understand their real estate as an investment. And if you consider how much we all spend on our housing, really do, and doing little tweaks, like taking a second look at that, helo that you have, is there a better way to structure it so that you’re spending less?

Nicole: What is the interest rate that you’re on? When does it a adjust, taking a more watchful eye to these major expenses that you have. And a lot of people don’t know that they have options, so that’s a really big focus of home owning right now. 

Brent: Yeah. I think you, you brought up a really good point about your financial advisor and it’s been my experience that a lot of financial advisors don’t look.

Brent: A rental property as a valid investment, they think somewhat probab. Some do I’m not gonna, I shouldn’t generalize so much, but a lot of them would say you put your money in bonds or stocks or, and properties sometimes, or a property or maybe a real estate fund might be something they would recommend.

Brent: But buying a rental property and then trying to. Is sometimes out of their purview. Maybe it’s more common for entrepreneurs to buy doing something like that. But I Maybe just a quick comment on that. Do you feel as 

Nicole: that’s, Yeah, I think that, wealth managers and investment managers, they know their domain very well.

Nicole: And if you think about. There’s a lot to consider already in their domain. They’re not really necessarily trained or equipped to do something, in the real estate realm because real estate investment is itself a large domain. There’s a lot of math and a lot of considerations, tax considerations all kinds of things.

Nicole: Liability considerations. With real estate investment that is, that, I don’t know that you could expect someone to also be an expert in, it’s a different kind of thing. I have a good friend Roger Brown who wrote a book called and I Wish I had it here. He’s a great guy. It’s called Real Estate in.

Nicole: Math or something like that. 

Brent: Roger Brown. I’ll put it I’ll do some research and I’ll put it in the show notes. 

Nicole: Yeah, no he’s an amazing mathematician and so I, I learned a lot from him. He did a lot of work with me over the years, validating the math that I was doing. , helping me make sure that it was solid.

Nicole: And so I learned a lot about real estate investment from him, and I just know that I’ve read his book. It’s very interesting, but it’s it’s something if you’re gonna get into that field, I just don’t think that an investment, a wealth manager is the right person to maybe help you with.

Brent: Yeah, and I guess I never thought about this. Probably there probably are wealth managers that are focused more on the real estate side rather than the just straight up investment side. That’s an interesting, I, that’s an interesting take on things. Yeah. How about what about recommending if somebody were to buy a, an apartment, just paying cash for it.

Brent: Is there ever a good time to do that 

Nicole: right now? Yeah. , I think right now, if you’re a cash buyer, And, you can imagine if the Fed is trying to, slow the economy down and and we know that rates are going up and mortgage rates aren’t tied to that specifically, but they have definitely, the, a lot of relationship to the cost of money being lent, So you know right now you would expect real estate prices to decrease as it’s harder for people to buy homes in this high interest rate environment or high mortgage rate environment.

Nicole: If you’re a cash buyer, you’re, this is your time, Like this is this is in your sweet spot cuz you. If prices are declining and you’re competing against people who have to get a mortgage and you don’t need a mortgage, then you know it’s your 

Brent: time. Yeah. Good. Nicole, we have a few minutes left.

Brent: And it always goes by so fast. If if you have one little piece of advice that you could give somebody, what would that be? To get into the housing market right now. 

Nicole: I think that you should if you wanna be a homeowner and home ownership is for you, you should make it a goal. And don’t give up on it because it does have a lot of potential to improve your financial situation, but at the same time, obviously you wanna know what you’re getting into.

Brent: Yeah, I like that. I like that concept because if you never set a goal, you’ll never 

Nicole: achieve. Exactly. It’s true for everything in life, isn’t it, Brent? 

Brent: Yeah, that’s fairly, that’s a really good way to look at it. So Nicole, as we close out the podcast to give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug, what would you like to plug today?

Nicole: I have a newsletter. It has a lot of subscribers. You can go to my site, homeowner.com/newsletter. You can sign. And also, take a peek at the site. There is the formula, which is for people who want to be aspiring homeowners, and there is what we call the reef, which is financial analysis for getting better returns on your, on the money you spend on home ownership.

Nicole: That’s great. That was really three plugs, . That’s 

Brent: perfectly fine. You had to sit through my joke, no, I 

Nicole: love you could get it. I wanna hear more of your jokes. Okay. 

Brent: You could get extra plugs because of the bad joke. , 

Nicole: the free joke. 

Brent: Yes. Thank you so much for being here today. It’s been such a pleasure.

Brent: And just so many more things we could talk about on this subject. 

Nicole: Yes, Thank you for having me. Wonderful to be here with you. Thank you.

Talk Commerce Thien-Lan Weber

Four Ways to Increase your Website ROI with Thien-Lan Weber

Tune in today to learn about the four easy steps you can take BEFORE Black Friday to make your site faster. (You can even tune in after Black Friday). Thien-Lan Weber talks about the four easy steps you can take today to ensure your ROI is maximized on your website ROI.

OneStepCheckout is not a traditional Magento module provider with a lot of extensions. Our checkout module is our core business. We work exclusively with checkout and conversions to always bring you the best possible checkout product. We are all about reducing customer abandonment and increasing customer conversions.

Show notes

  1. Page speed deck by John Hughes:  tiny.cc/irx-page-speed
  2. Forbes Finance Council Article: https://blog.onestepcheckout.com/2022/10/ecommerce-tips-holiday-recession-economic-downturn/
  3. Optty (Buy Now Pay Later Aggregator): https://www.optty.com/
  4. Hyva: https://blog.onestepcheckout.com/category/hyva/
  5. Wyomind Shipping Extension: https://blog.onestepcheckout.com/2022/08/insights-why-click-collect-further-boosts-checkout-conversion-bopis-in-store-pickup/
  6. OneStepCheckout Seamless Registration Feature: https://blog.onestepcheckout.com/2021/10/onestepcheckout-for-magento-2-registration-account-creation-modes/

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this Spoony holiday edition of Talk Commerce. Today I have Thien-Lan Weber from One Step Checkout and she has done a much better job of her costume and background than I have Thien-Lan. Why don’t you go ahead, introduce yourself, tell us what your day to day role is and one of your passions in life.

Thien-Lan: Hello, I’m Thien-Lan Weber. I work for OneStepCheckOut. So I guess most people know me otherwise. One step checkout is the main Magento extension to reduce for Magento one and Magen two. My passion in life, it’s eCommerce and drumming. I also like dress. And appearing on podcasts. 

Brent: Excellent, thank you.

Brent: And so today before we get into our regular content, I’m gonna tell you a joke and then you are going to tell me if that joke should be free or if we could charge for it. Ready? You ready, ? Okay. I found out my girlfriend is really a ghost. I had my suspicions the moment she walked through the door.

Thien-Lan: It’ll be free. 

Brent: Good. All right, Telan. I know today is Halloween, so I dressed up in my doctor who Christmas sweater, which I have my holidays completely mixed. And you are very well appointed in a a scary outfit with a span stuck in your head and you even have a great background. I appreciate that.

Brent: But we, let’s talk about the scary state of the economy and things coming. And then I think, let’s put it into context of what merchants can be doing to make sure that they’re getting everything they can out of their website. . Exactly. 

Thien-Lan: Yeah. So yeah, not very funny. The current state of the economy is pretty gloomy.

Thien-Lan: We actually, I noticed that in New York when I went for McLin to New York, it was not as vibrant as 2018 and 2019 when I went and even the locals like Eric, and. Laura was telling, wa was saying that, A bit more dangerous. Lots of homeless people in the street. And I guess here in Europe we hear all the news about inflation war in Ukraine and yeah.

Thien-Lan: Worldwide inflation is around 8.2%. For the last 12 months in the US it’s yeah, around 8%. In Europe it’s around 10%, but with big discrepancies between countries like France, where I live, which is like 6%, and countries where Anton I imagine to expert lives in Estonia where it’s like 25%.

Thien-Lan: So yeah pretty. 

Brent: Yeah. And so I know that there are ways in which merchants can help. And one step checkout is at the end of the funnel, let’s say at the checkout process. And I, you mentioned that you had done a article with Forbes about some points in which merchants can look or work through the checkout process.

Brent: Why don’t you explain a little bit about what that was? 

Thien-Lan: Yep. We partner up with nata, who is a for finance council member to talk about this context and what eCommerce merchants can do as quick wins to get more sales this holidays. So it’s all about getting. Market share because consumers will have less spending power.

Thien-Lan: So the competition will be really fierce among all the brands. And you need to offer an experience that really appeals from the moment that people like even before people learn on your website up to the end of your online sales funnel. So today, I’m happy to share with you those four. and and they should be a lot, most of them should be implementable before this holiday season.

Thien-Lan: So that’s the good news. 

Brent: All right, so let’s just tell let’s tell us the four points and then let’s go into detail on each one of them. Yep. 

Thien-Lan: So the first point is to have a fast. Sorry. A fast website good performing websites. Consumers who go to your website, if they, it’s loading in more than two seconds, they’re going to leave and go to another website.

Thien-Lan: So performance is key here and throughout the whole browsing experience, you need to make sure that it loads fast enough so that people don’t leave and find items that they want, gift ideas, and put them into. So that would be by using themes like Hova, for example, on two, that makes the whole experience much faster and even helps you score rank higher in the search results so as to capture more traffic.

Thien-Lan: So that’s number one. 

Brent: Number two, Okay, so I, Yep, go ahead. No, go for it. Number two 

Thien-Lan: is around shipping. So with C we saw that by online pickup, in store, or click and collect is very popular. And sales going through those channels are going faster than eCommerce itself. So given that most of most of the time those shipping methods are more cost efficient, it costs nothing for the retailer to just have people come and pick it up.

Thien-Lan: It’s going to be very useful for consumers who can’t afford those extra five, $10 for shipping. So that was number two offer. More flexible shipping methods, including cost effective ones. Third one is offering flexible payment methods. And for the last couple of years, by now, pay later has been very popular as well because they allow consumers to pay, let’s say, in sport installments every fortnight, but without paying any.

Thien-Lan: So that helps when the budget is very strained to break it down into a longer period so you get your paycheck and you don’t pay anything on top of that. So offering payment methods that consumers like need for the holiday seasons is a big factor for to drive. And last but not least, having a good checkout that removes all friction from the checkout experience and allows consumers to place their order without forcing them to create an account or look for two coupon code that you might not have, or filling a lot of fields that will allow you to convert all that traffic.

Thien-Lan: And your efforts along the online sales funnel into an actual order. 

Brent: So three out of the four are at the end of the funnel, which is probably pretty common that once they get through, number one, if it’s fast enough, they’re gonna, they’re gonna wanna buy something. What if you start at the top of the funnel with.

Brent: The Google has changed its its algorithms to now put more weight on the speed of your site. And if, let’s just say so one step checkout supports more than just Magento, right? There, there are other platforms that you’re supporting. 

Thien-Lan: So for Dar, we are looking at supporting Que, but the priority is to support Magento two and Which makes Magento two much faster.

Thien-Lan: And is adding the sexy back into Magento, 

Brent: adding the sexy back in, is that what you said? Yep. That’s good. . Okay. So having that sub two second load time, which in the past first Magento especially, has been unheard of. So some of the tools I guess people could use to help with that would just be Google Lighthouse and Google Page speed insights.

Thien-Lan: Exactly. Another resource that I found very useful and entertaining was a deck of slides by John Hughes from ue it was a hundred slides, but very funny ones about page speed, why, what you can do, and all the tips. We can add the links to the notes of this podcast. But this is a fantastic

Brent: Perfect. Yeah, and I will add the, I will add that to all the show notes. Alright, so let’s move on to shipping. So I think in the US anyways, shipping free shipping is the thing and Amazon is really driving that. Do you recommend that merchants do free shipping? 

Thien-Lan: So that’s a strategic decision based on your cost goods sold, your pricing, your competitors.

Thien-Lan: So I can’t. You have to offer free shipping or you have to include shipping in your item price. I think depending on categories and consumers there might be different strategies that was better for you. But yeah, consumers one of the key reasons for carbon environment is when consumers see extra cost at the end of checkouts, so that often happens.

Thien-Lan: when checkout is on two pages with the first page with the item price, and then the second page with tax shipping all additional costs. So that’s a big driver. Either you state up upfront how much your shipping is going to be, or you put a threshold of. When shipping becomes free, and that works quite well to get consumers to pile up their cart and reach that threshold.

Thien-Lan: That makes sense for you financially. But yeah the most important is to be very up upfront and not have any surprises. When shoppers go to the end of checkout and see the final cost they have to pay. 

Brent: Yeah, and I can say from experience that I have dropped out of the cart many times when I get to the end and suddenly shipping is a quarter of the cost of the entire order.

Brent: And I automatically go to Amazon then because A, I know that the ship, there’s no shipping. And then b, I also know that it’s gonna come in two days. The other, I think the other good strategy in terms of shipping, and I do agree that showing shipping up front is such an important thing to do. If you were to have a threshold of, say if you spend 50 euros or $50 and then you get free shipping, I think that’s something that I, that appeals to me and it also gets me to spend a little bit more money.

Brent: So if you’re at $49, you search like crazy on what does that $2 item I could get to get my free shipping maybe talk 

Thien-Lan: a little bit about, Does that I do the thing I haven’t looked for. The product that is the same as shipping. If shipping is $10, I’d be like, Oh, I get that $10 items. I can have it for free.

Brent: Yeah, absolutely. And if merchants are very clever, they would also do maybe a little scale that says Here’s how close you are to get to free shipping. And if you just add this one more thing. And if they’re very clever, they would add some extremely high high profit items. As incentives to get over that shipping amount.

Brent: So say you’re at $9 and they have something that they charge $9 for, but they pay a dollar for it. Hey, buy this item and you’ll get over your free shipping. There’s so many tactics that merchants could use if they start thinking about the behavior of consumers. And as a merchant too, I think you should be looking at what your competitors are doing and trying to make sure that you’re not missing out on something like that.

Brent: So for example, if your competitor is just offering free shipping, but their every item is a little bit more expensive there’s a reason for it. I think we’ve seen that on Amazon. Sometimes those really cheap things are more expensive cuz there’s free shipping and I you mentioned that earlier.

Brent: About the free shipping part of it. The other one the second one or the third one you mentioned was flexible payments, and you mentioned buy now, pay later. Talk a little bit about that. 

Thien-Lan: Yes I’ve been following the Buy now pay later trend for two, three years now. And it all started in Australia and today there are more probably a dozen brands who offer Buy Now pay.

Thien-Lan: the most popular in the US would be a firm and in Europe might be clown. And the whole objective what I find very interesting is that it’s a win-win for consumers and for merchants. The merchants pay a little bit more with our in terms of fees, but consumers get to pay. To slice their payments over six weeks and sometimes more without pay, paying in any interest.

Thien-Lan: So it’s, great for them especially when they are they don’t have much budget and and it. Showed to drive a lot more conversion. And also a lot of those brands, they have their own app. They have their own consumer database, so they give exposure to their own merchants through their apps.

Thien-Lan: So let’s say on the Klan apps, you will say you will have or buy from ex brands, and then consumers will go directly from the cla up to that. Instead of going through Instagram ads or, Google search. 

Brent: Yeah. And I think the other thing would be to make sure that they’re at least saving the token for the credit card to check out.

Brent: So second time around, you don’t have to enter all that information. Talk a little bit about that friction that happens in shipping and payment in your check. 

Thien-Lan: Yeah so yeah, as I said, the number one reason for car abandonment is high shipping costs. So that’s why it makes sense to offer various options and buy, install to buy online pickup in store.

Thien-Lan: Is a interesting one. And yeah, we’ve partnered with French Magento extension provider called Why Your Mind That does very good quality extensions to allow that and add all these options. So the, this is The more payment and shipping options you offer, the less friction you get because consumers want certain options and if you don’t have them, they will go elsewhere.

Thien-Lan: So for shipping, that’s a great one. And for payments, either, they, one of the reason why they leave a website is also when they don’t trust the website. They have never heard of that band before, that the item is interesting and they don’t want to leave their credit card. So in that case, they would rather, for example, use paper.

Thien-Lan: And so it’s a good one to offer as well. 

Brent: Just going back to the shipping I spoke with somebody earlier who said that they clicked on an Instagram ad and they were they needed something for a holiday. I don’t remember the holiday, but they needed it by a specific date and they said the shipping would be three to five days.

Brent: Their date was two weeks out, so there was plenty of time the two weeks came and went and there that nothing was ever shipped. Talk about the importance of maybe some reviews and having that knowledge that, hey, that item is actually gonna get there on time. Because I think sometimes people also wanna know that I’m gonna buy this and I need this, and if I don’t get it in this amount of time, I’m gonna go somewhere else.

Thien-Lan: Yep. So I guess there are two things here. One is setting expectations. So having the right information, the accurate information about when the item is going to arrive at your place is important. The other day I went to a local merchant and they have their own calculation and algorithm saying, Oh, for shipping it might be three, four.

Thien-Lan: But then they don’t re, it’s not accurate. It doesn’t really talk to the carrier. So it’s not, that trustworthy. So if you can, have the right timing and specify information about. When the order is going to be processed, when is going to be packed, when is it’s going to be shipped, and based on how far the consumer is, how long it’s going to take to be shipped, that would be the best.

Thien-Lan: But yeah, otherwise it is better to, overestimate the shipping time, then underestimate and then disappoint. 

Brent: All right. So let’s get then to the, Oh we’ve talked a lot about frictions. Tell us about how, maybe, how one a checkout can help reduce that friction with the client at checkout.

Thien-Lan: Yep. After shipping cost being the number one reason for car and the number, the second one is forcing consumers to create an account. So how many times have you been to a website where, Click on cards I want to pay. And then you have that page that says, Log in, I’ll create an account. And you can’t do anything.

Thien-Lan: You can’t, pay, you can’t get your item. And 25% of consumers leave at that point. So we, OneStepCheckOut we’ve been addressing that. Thanks to feedback from a lot of our merchants and clients, and what we do is we allow to create an account by simply using all the information that anyone would answer when they fill out their shipping details.

Thien-Lan: So email, first name, last name, address, and the only thing you need to add it is a small tick box where consumers can enter their passwords twice and that creates an account. So we call it seamless account registration, and it replaces that, account creation wall that is making, 25% of people leave.

Brent: Do you find at that stage some people forget that they have an account and they fill out all that information. How do you get around the idea? , they go through that, they forgot that they created an account and then they click and then it comes back and says, You already have an account.

Brent: Please enter your password. And then they’ve forgotten their password and by the time they get around to finding it, they’ve left because they forgot they were even what they were ordering. Yeah, 

Thien-Lan: that happens quite a lot. So yeah. I think we also allow people to check out as. And then have the account reconciliation later after.

Thien-Lan: I have to get back to you on that. But I think that would be the sensible thing to do because you absolutely don’t want people to be stopped at that point when they’re ready. To give you money and to pay for that item. 

Brent: Talk a little bit about the idea of one step checkout. What, like the reason why it’s called One Step?

Brent: I think that’s obvious, but a lot of people don’t think through all the different steps that they have to go at checkout. 

Thien-Lan: So it all started with Magento one, and back then checkout was six steps. So it made a massive difference to have all those steps into just one. Above the fold with one single button that says Order now.

Thien-Lan: So you can fill out all your fields and not click any next button, just one big button order now. 

Brent: So it’s making sure that there’s almost nothing you have to do make sure you complete checkout. How about making sure that users The right address and things like that. I’m assuming, integrates with other plat or other services that help find the right address.

Brent: Yeah, go ahead. 

Thien-Lan: The key advantage of our product is that we integrate with. 90% of the third party extensions that are out there. So address validation, that works really well. Tax calculation shipping estimates, any shipping extension hundreds of payment extensions. So whatever you need, you can integrate it with one step checkout.

Brent: All right. I wanna switch directions just slightly. Okay. Are you seeing the same amount of people on Magento two using your services, or do you feel like it’s declining right now? 

Thien-Lan: So with Magento two, we could see that it’s on the other side of the product maturity curve. The number of install.

Thien-Lan: And the number of orders for Agen two has been slowing down. But as I said, with Hova, it’s been picking back up, so that’s why I’m saying it’s bringing sexy back. And so a lot of, I would say, yeah, big proportion of new orders from west of checkout, from gen two are driven by hiva things. . 

Brent: So you would, you could say that HAFA is changing.

Brent: HOA is ch is saving Magento from the dorans, from the tomb. 

Thien-Lan: Let’s say that . 

Brent: Absolutely. So if you have something that we started off with spooky and scary. What would be the biggest thing you could tell a merchant that they should think about for. website and for their checkout process, 

Thien-Lan: I would say yeah, performance is key.

Thien-Lan: So today people don’t want to wait. Most people would buy their holidays, gifts on mobile, so it has to be mobile friendly. Loading really fast, allowing them to browse and or even, guiding them into what would be the most interesting, the best selling products because people are also looking for inspiration and then removing friction all the way through to check out and let them place their order without asking them for too many questions or asking them to do too many things.

Thien-Lan: So a lot of a lot of that friction is also in the order. Subscribe to our newsletter, get $5 off. Remember this, do this, do that. And you’re like, Go away. Go away. I want my product. And then someone calls you, you do something else, and then you go to another website 

Brent: to shop. Yeah, that’s, that’s a great point.

Brent: I do, I’ve had quite a few guests that say, Love you learn to love the popup, but make sure you don’t have the popup in checkout. Because it I agree. It’s so annoying when you’re typing in. All of a sudden you get the popup and says, that, says, Enter your email address and subscribe to our newsletter when you could have a checkbox in your checkout that says, I’m, I’d like to subscribe your newsletter , because you’re putting your email address anyways.

Brent: Exactly. Yeah, that’s a really great point. Popups popups, especially on mobile. I think the other thing is that merchants still are thinking desktop first, and we’ve talked about performance and we’ve talked about friction in the checkout. Friction in the checkout is even more when you’re on mobile because it’s so much smaller.

Brent: So having that easy to use navigation is so important. Do you have any words of advice for people to. Enter as little as possible for the checkout. For mobile, You mean for consumers? No. For a merchant. Is there anything that they can do to reduce the amount of things like you, You said that having options for shipping, but I think.

Brent: At some point, if you have so many options, that’s too many options to show on your mobile phone. Is it recommended that you have as little options or making sure that they don’t have a lot of opt or even that’s where the free shipping would come in, where they don’t even have to choose shipping because it’s free.

Brent: Anything that, and that helps merchants check out on mobile quicker. 

Thien-Lan: Yeah, that’s that’s an interesting point and I’ve seen it with. A lamp company. So they are the biggest in Europe. They have lamp.de eliminations.co, uk, lamp.fr, and 13 lamp sites across Europe. And for all their websites they have, they almost removed the shipping method.

Thien-Lan: Section because they have one carrier, one shipping cost, and you don’t have to choose. So that makes the whole checkout form much shorter and it’s quicker. People don’t have to wonder, Oh, what do I want? It just tells you what you’re going to have and that’s it. 

Brent: So you’d say they’re helping us shed new light on the checkout process?

Thien-Lan: Yep. They help. Yep. They help simplify the whole thing and I guess they’ve seen that consumers are happy with that. So why give the choice when you know it’s the best options for you as a merchant and consumers are happy? 

Brent: Excellent. Telan we are running outta time. And as a bonus on the episode I do want to do another free.

Brent: Because it’s Halloween and I have a Halloween joke for you. And then we’re gonna go into our shameless plug. But before we get there, I do have a special Halloween segment joke for you today. So again, this one is free or paid. Are you ready? Ready. Why did the policeman ticket the ghost on Halloween?

Brent: It didn’t have a haunting license.

Thien-Lan: paid with 

subscription . 

Brent: Excellent. Good. All right. Yeah. Tn Lan, Thank you so much. As I close out every episode, I give our guests a chance to do a shameless plug about anything you’d like. What would you like to plug today? 

Thien-Lan: The only thing I didn’t mention was that Natasha Sonoma from the Forbes.

Thien-Lan: Council is the CEO of Optt, O P W T Y, and that’s innovative platform that allows you to acquire and manage all your, by now, pay later brands all in one space. So that’s really cool because depending on your. Not all the favorite brands are the same. And if you operate in lots of different countries, you can acquire them all at once, and then in the panel you can see who is performing better and you can dial up that down based on your storefronts.

Thien-Lan: So that really helps consumers have the preferred payment methods. And in terms of integration, that helps all the hustle. talking to each of the brands, integrating them into your two checkout, and then seeing which one works for you. Yeah, excellent. For one, it’s not a plug for one step checkout, but for Opti, and that is compatible with one Step out as well.

Thien-Lan: So it’s like a Lego blog. You have one to click out, you plug Opti and from Opti you can have access to 60 by no pay later. . 

Brent: Very cool. Thank you so much. And I will put all these in the show notes and I will try to get this episode live as soon as possible so we are not so far away. Ka TA’s Halloween and it won’t go live today, I’m afraid, but we should have done a live stream.

Brent: That would’ve been a good idea. Yeah. Anyways thank you so much for being here today. 10. Who also helps on the Magento Association. I appreciate all your work and she’s now showing us a nice sticker for one step checkout. I would encourage everybody to go there for their Magento two sites, and I would encourage everybody to use hfa.

Brent: Our newest HofA is our newest sponsor for Talk Calm. So you’re excited about 

Thien-Lan: that as well. There you go. I wasn’t even paid to talk about them. , 

Brent: thank you so much. Have a great. . 

Thien-Lan: Thank you. Bye.

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