EP374: More Traffic Isn’t the Answer: Better eCommerce CRO

Krisztian (00:00.239) That's it. Neil Twa (00:00.622) right, Krista, thanks for coming…

Krisztian (00:00.239) That's it. Neil Twa (00:00.622) right, Krista, thanks for coming on, man. We were just chatting and I realized we probably should have just hit record earlier while we were jamming out. It's a fun, you know, I have a fun time talking to you. You're a great guy. And so I'm really excited to talk more about what you're doing today on the podcast for anybody listening to this out here. Thank you so much for listening along to the High Voltage Business Builder podcast. This is a guest episode. If you've been around the block here, you've probably been listening to some of our more curated tactical AI conversations, but I always want to bring the human aspect to what we're doing. think there's still value in the transfer of that authority. So I like to bring good people on here. And in our pre-green room conversations with Kristen, I thought it would be great to bring him in here. He's a cool looking dude. If you're not watching him on YouTube right now, he's slick. He's got the, you know, no hair thing going on, but he's rocking it. I wouldn't be able to do that, bro, because I got too many like cracks in my head. I think I was dropped when I was a baby and it just wouldn't look right. But you're rocking it. Krisztian (00:54.159) You Neil Twa (00:55.202) So for those of you who are not looking at him on YouTube, you're missing out, you should go over to YouTube and check it out, because he's a good looking guy. And I'm excited to have him on the podcast. Thanks for coming on. Krisztian (01:04.547) Thank you very much for the invitation, Neil. Happy to be here with you today. Neil Twa (01:08.012) Yeah, man. So what's on your mind today? What's what's have you had a good day? Did you get your coffee in? I mean, in your time of the world, it's almost evening, right? Krisztian (01:13.807) Yes, of course, company is already prepared. Actually, BIAS is actually the end of the day because in my time zone, it's a quarter past five in the afternoon. But I was very looking forward to our conversation because I think we were talking about before, actually, you have started the recording that the whole era regarding digital marketing, e-commerce and everything is changing so fast. It's very hard actually to keep up to date regarding the tons of... Neil Twa (01:40.662) It really is, right? And the things you can create now. There's a balance between creation and this is something you and I were jamming on and I didn't quite get to there, but the value of what can be provided as a service from someone else versus what you can create. There are opportunities to do it yourself and there are opportunities to not waste your time on certain aspects of what AI is doing today and then just go hire the people to get it done. Would you agree or disagree with that? Krisztian (02:05.985) I would formulate it a little bit different. So what I see, especially in e-commerce space, so I can talk about our areas because usually I have meetings and correspondence with a lot of e-commerce owners. But I see that, okay, AI is definitely a big hype. Everybody wants to do something with AI, but the biggest challenge or the gap, what I see that they don't have actually a strategy. Neil Twa (02:23.886) Hmm. Mm-hmm. Neil Twa (02:33.89) Right. They're just doing it. They're doing it every day. Yeah, right, right. Well, to make life easier, for more simple, to automate something, to not do more work, like to stop working. I think that's everybody's ultimate goal, right? It's like AI is going to stop me from having to do any work anymore. Krisztian (02:34.383) don't have a concept behind it. For what purpose? What is your plan? What do you like to implement? Krisztian (02:50.455) Yeah, it's typical, for example, by us, by our tool, an AI-powered CRO tool. I hear it sometimes from clients or even from agencies that they wish they just push one button and the e-commerce conversion rates go up. Neil Twa (03:04.28) all the work is done. Yeah. We are ultimately on the race to becoming the laziest marketer who wins, right? Krisztian (03:10.083) Yeah, it happens actually like a magic wand in five minutes and everything is ready. we know it's actually definitely not the case. Neil Twa (03:17.026) Yeah, I call it planned obsolescence for the AI generation. We're AI creating our way into obsolescence in some ways. And this is part of the conversation that I was having with my daughter before this call for the last two hours, as you and I were talking about, was where do you fit? You're no longer the worker in this. You have to stop thinking about the person who OK, so what I was telling one of the things was she talked about going to Fiverr and helping with editor skills. I'm like, that's super great. However, you can build an editor skill that's 10 times more powerful for you if you understand what it's doing and how to create it and how to utilize it. And I said at the same time, there are people selling those skills on Fiverr right now who are doing the work. But I literally just saw a guy on X earlier who created an agent that creates high CTR thumbnails for YouTube, has his own Fiverr account, this agent. and then makes money selling YouTube thumbnails on Fiverr. I'm like, what? You can't compete with that. There's no point with you trying to go create thumbnails now as a person and designing them. You just need to know the system and become the marketing coordinator where the agent goes and has its own Fiverr account and makes thumbnails or does an editor or creates videos for you and then manage the account and makes money. So each of these agents could be sitting out there doing that work, but you have to be smart enough to coordinate it, know what it's doing, understand what it's doing correctly, or you'll just be garbage in garbage out. And that's part of the thing we talked about earlier, right? There's a lot of garbage coming out right now. And that's what we have to be careful about because there's a shiny object syndrome, right? Like the squirrel, know, people squirrel and they're like going in different directions on AI. And one of the things I constantly talk about and where you're headed with this, I know in our pre-conversations. was AI is not going to fix all the problems, be single push button marketing of your entire engine and just stop you from working, go set on the beach and nothing's gonna happen. You have to be in control of what it's doing. You have to understand where it's going. You have to apply it correctly, especially in e-comm. And if your fundamentals, your foundation is broken, AI is only gonna 10x the garbage. Krisztian (05:13.837) Definitely. It can't make any big magic. So it's so important what you have mentioned that you have to understand the basic lines. If you have never heard about conversion rate optimization, you don't even understand what does it mean. Neil Twa (05:27.054) You're just going to get 10x of the non-converting optimization. You get a lot of revenue, but no profit. You get a lot of vanity, but no sanity. The end result is yes, the thing that I keep talking about, the thing that I want people to understand, and I think you're on the same boat, is you must have the fundamentals in place first, understand what's actually working, and then see how AI can 10x that output, that revenue stream, that opportunity, that workflow. Krisztian (05:30.733) Yes, definitely. Neil Twa (05:53.965) And then make sure that it's doing it the right way and doesn't break something because you actually understand what it should be doing, not expecting it to know everything it's going to do and you expecting to not know anything of it because well, AI knows it all. Ecom owners are making that terrible mistake right now. And I see them going to growth hack conferences. I see them looking at the idea that CRO is, well, yeah, sure. It's just conversion rate optimization. I just have to convert higher. It has to optimize better. Well, that's very simple, isn't it? Krisztian (06:20.943) Yeah, so actually, what if I... Neil Twa (06:21.868) I mean, the concept is simple. That's what I'm really saying. The concept is simple. It's the execution that fails, right? There we go. Krisztian (06:28.387) Yeah, that's correct. That's correct. And actually also very typical failure, what I see, one of my favorite stories. If for example, e-commerce stores owners ask us to, okay, I would like to start with AI powered CRO because it sounds very great. Next question. Okay. How many visitors do you have? approximately 2000 unique visitors per month. Sorry. You don't even need CRO and especially not AI powered CRO because you don't have a CRO problem. Neil Twa (06:43.342) Mm-hmm, real sexy. Neil Twa (06:53.144) you need more hicketers Krisztian (06:57.027) You have a traffic problem. Just try to increase your traffic because below a special traffic level, you don't even need to deal with conversion rate optimization and especially not AI powered because as we know, all the AI tool needs data. If there are not enough data there, also the output will be not so magnificent, of course. Neil Twa (06:57.043) Right. have a traffic problem. traffic. Neil Twa (07:18.402) Well, that's exactly what happens. Again, garbage in and garbage out. So for those of you who listening, if you're in the new seller space, welcome to the episode that teaches you how to not look at stupid stuff. If you're an existing seller, welcome to the episode that teaches you how to not do stupid stuff. It really is a common problem with new existing or even growing or expanding operators, right? The idea that I'm going to get more out of less. Krisztian (07:31.759) Ha Neil Twa (07:43.811) Hence the problem with, well, you need more traffic. You don't have enough data to really optimize anything anyways. And then the problem of, how do I get more traffic? I thought I had a conversion problem. Which cart and horse? mean, which one are you helping to solve ultimately? Where is your skill set? Krisztian (08:01.583) I would say our real skill is from the level where you have actually reached the level where you can say, okay, this is a kind of established business. There is definitely a product market fit. The store has already generated some kind of revenue and has at least, I would say 10,000 unique visitors. Yeah, 10,000 a month. Neil Twa (08:23.982) 10,000 a month. And you're talking about like a Shopify store or a front end direct to consumer town. Yeah. Okay. Krisztian (08:28.899) Whatever it can be a Shopify store, magenta or WooCommerce. It's actually independent from the platform, not the platform matters. Neil Twa (08:34.55) independent from platforms. So you're not really talking about Amazon or TikTok or Walmart, et cetera. Where you're really focused is on the DTC side of conversion optimization for a direct to consumer channel market, a Shopify, a website, a WooCommerce, kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Krisztian (08:42.351) Correct. Krisztian (08:47.885) Yeah, exactly. And the point is how to make more from your existing traffic. First of all, with hyper personalization, because it's so important to understand that if you would like to increase your conversion rates, first of all, you have to increase your customer experience. First of all, you have to focus on your visitors, because if you are able to do that as a nice side effect, also your numbers, your KPIs will... Neil Twa (08:53.6) Exactly. That's real optimization. Yeah. Neil Twa (09:06.882) Right. Right. Krisztian (09:16.791) your performance will be better. So simple is it, actually. Neil Twa (09:19.362) Yeah. Well, yeah, simple. But first you have to get 10,000 visitors a month to your website. So if you're listening to this, folks, and you have less than 10,000, your first goal, if you're listening to this today, is get more traffic, right? And then you focus on your optimizations. And you said personalized optimizations. What does that mean? Krisztian (09:25.263) You Krisztian (09:37.775) When I would like to formulate it very simple regarding the on-site messages, show the right people the right message at the right time. The focus on these three areas, because I see it very often the problem that a lot of e-commerce stores still try first of all to sell something in the first moment. It doesn't work anymore. The customer journeys are longer than ever before. Neil Twa (09:48.824) just in time. Neil Twa (10:01.656) Mm-hmm. Krisztian (10:06.703) The more expensive is your product and the more complex is to understand this, the higher is the customer journey, the more touch points will be needed from a new visitor to achieve the level on the customer journey that they are ready to buy. And of course, most of the e-commerce owners don't want to do this whole process. They wish that for the first time they're going to buy it, but they definitely won't buy it. We know it exactly because we know that the average e-commerce conversion rate is now between 2 and 3%, Neil Twa (10:20.462) Hmm. Neil Twa (10:24.899) Yeah. Right. Yep. Neil Twa (10:35.278) 2 and 3 % on the front end is what we see. Yeah, that's really optimized. If you get 3 to 5%, you're on the money double your spend like today. So, which leads me to optimization metrics. So I hear a lot about ROAS, which I hate. I prefer POAS, not the one from the storyline as the BOAS, BROKAS, POAS. We want the ones that make a lot of money profit, right? Have you ever heard that story about the BOAS from the Bible? Don't be a BOAS, a BROKAS or a dumb ass. Krisztian (10:37.401) Correct. Krisztian (10:42.1) You Krisztian (10:56.91) Yes. Neil Twa (10:59.916) You want to be a POS. And in the wrong way, you want a profit opportunity, right? Profit on returns. But what are the other metrics? I people talk a lot about TAC, customer acquisition costs. We talk about the LTV. I don't think a lot of people talk about LDR. Yeah, but I can talk about lifetime revenue of that particular person, which is a different metric. Which metrics are the ones ultimately that are going to create that high customized personalization and say, you are now optimized double your spend? Krisztian (11:12.265) That's my lifetime value. Neil Twa (11:29.858) Like which ones are you constantly focused on? Krisztian (11:33.057) I would say definitely average order value and yeah, AOE, yeah, and revenue procession. Neil Twa (11:36.11) Okay, AOV, yep. Neil Twa (11:41.967) Revenue per session. Let's unpack that one. I think a lot of people have heard of average order value and they, and to summarize that in my language and you correct me from wrong is when we are doing that on our DTC channel, it is how much more can I get a customer to buy at time of checkout? Can I get them thinking about a $25 product? Can I get them to 50? If I can get them to 50, can I get them to a hundred? Right. And then I can, get my AOV average order value up across a 30 day period from, you know, 20 to 40 from 40 to 60 from 60 to 80 and so on. Right. Krisztian (11:56.537) Correct. Krisztian (12:11.651) Yeah, definitely. With cross-sell upsell campaigns on site, you can definitely increase this average order value. Neil Twa (12:12.374) Okay. Neil Twa (12:17.432) So revenue per session, unpack that for me. Krisztian (12:22.051) Okay, it's a little bit more complex KPI because it actually calculates also the number of your visitors, your sessions, sorry, your sessions, because we know exactly that, for example, one visitor can have more sessions. And the real low-hanging fruit is by the returning visitors. Because from experience, of course, the... Dwelling time, average on-site spend time, is much higher by the returning visitors. And also the e-commerce conversion rate is much higher by returning visitors. So you should much more focus on the returning visitors because we very often use a seed parator principle. But actually, only 20 % of the visitors are returning visitors, but they generate 80 % of the total revenue of the store. Neil Twa (13:08.418) Yes. Neil Twa (13:15.832) Very cool. So there's an actual metric. You track a percentage of that where you're shooting for what's an average. We know 3%, 2 to 3 % on the conversion rate is amazing. So you should be shooting for that at the cart level. You should be shooting to increase your AOV as high as possible. But what's the percentage of that they should be looking for on that revenue when they get a customer to come back after that acquisition? What percentage and what time frame? Krisztian (13:40.463) It's really very hard to say because it's depending from so much factors. Like for example, in wind, which business model are you, what are your products? How many competitors do you have? Who are your ICPs? So it's very hard. And I don't think that it makes any sense to, give an average benchmark. Neil Twa (13:57.807) Well, let's give a non-average. We have an AOV of 46 on our store. We have at least five major competitors, anywhere between 20 to 100 million a year. We are seeing a return rate of about 7.9 % over 30 days on our current store. Krisztian (14:16.249) Hmm. I had to calculate it. must be honest. Like I can't say it right now, but if I see the numbers, if I gonna see the numbers, I'm happy. Neil Twa (14:21.314) You need to take your shoes off and. you take your shoes off and then you can calculate it. No, I'm just kidding. But I wanted to use a real world scenario to generalize something for people who are listening so they can kind of understand where we're at. Average product price is around twenty five ninety nine, but we're getting, you know, forty six in AOV because of what we're stacking up in the front and we're increasing additional bundles. want our AOV target at seventy five. So that's what we're working after. And we've grown from about 34 since I took the store on to 46. So we're definitely on the right trajectory. And we've watched our growth revenue metric over 30 days go from 3 % to 7, almost 8%. So what we're really focused on beyond customer acquisition costs, which is difficult today with CPMs and Meta and stuff being so ridiculous, is if we have to pay those costs to get the acquisition, we're getting that acquisition away from our competition. So really it gets down to how well is our SMS working? What is our revenue? per session, per client. And what does that LTR look like, that revenue for them? Do they come back and buy, you know, $800 from us in a 12 month period or a six month period? I really like to get it down to six months because of the turn, the speed of acquisition, you know, big companies with big budgets we're competing against and we just have to out maneuver them. I want us to be like a speedboat, right? To their Titanic. So we're really pushing hard beyond customer acquisition to build in subscriptions and return value of customers. Get that eight to like 16%. and get that AOV from 46 to 75. Those are metrics I'm shooting for on our DTC channel. And that's something that is a real world thing happening right now. The store was doing about 2,000 a month when we took it over, and it's done 45,000 last month. So we are definitely on its way to doubling that in the next 60 days. But we're trying to do it, of course, profitably. And this month, we're actually finally breaking into profit nearly every day in this process. But it has taken us about 90 days to get there. So these are real world numbers. Krisztian (16:03.695) Sounds great. Neil Twa (16:16.376) that we're dealing with. Because everybody thinks, well, if I put a product up there and I just throw traffic at it and I get a 3 % conversion, I'm going to make money. No, they do. That's what they think. Krisztian (16:24.143) It's so important this topic what you have mentioned now because exactly from this one I have posted I think yesterday on LinkedIn with two I think many short case studies that even with two times Ruaz can you make a lot of profit and even with 15 times Ruaz can you have actually loss. Neil Twa (16:45.55) Mm-hmm. You can take a loss. You can lose your shirt. Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. And I see the whole concept of 10x-ing being super cool in its nature, but not the revenue. It's easy to 10x the revenue. Sell a cheap product, get it in front of a million people in a year. You got a lot of revenue. But did you make any money off of that? Did you actually keep Krisztian (16:53.165) because it can be. Krisztian (17:12.761) profit. Yeah, that's the real question on the long term. Neil Twa (17:16.418) Yeah, did you actually keep anything in that process? And I've had a lot of business owners who come to me making, you know, million, two, three million a year, even up to five million a year who are very close to a loss in their business. Right. So it's very important. We understand where that optimization actually goes. And it's post click. think so many people worry about the first customer acquisition cost and they are not actually concerned as much about the factor that you're talking about on today's podcast. And that is how much do I keep from that customer? How do I keep them coming back? How do I increase their revenue every 30, 60, 90 days? And then I know that no matter what I spend on the front end, if it cost me $50 to acquire a customer that pays $25 for that product upfront, many would look at that and go, no. And I would look at that and say, did they come back in 40 days with no other customer acquisition costs because they came through an email SMS or they just came back of their own general consumable nature and bought another $40, another $70 of product within that 60 days. And then I'll pay $75 for that $25 person, right? And I don't think everybody understands that. Yeah. Don't get me started on Tmoo. Look, I ordered a broom on Tmoo. I ordered a broom on Tmoo and this is what I got, right? So everything is what you, this is the broom I got when I thought I was getting a broom for my deck. I got one of these from Tmoo. I don't know if you guys can see this, but it's like three inches long. Krisztian (18:18.909) I think the best example is Temu. I mean, as I know, they start to run from the third or fourth round. Neil Twa (18:39.99) No, T-Mos is one of those places where you think you're getting a product and it's, yeah, I'm going to argue with T-Mos, I think it's funny. T-Mos is like AliExpress for 20, 20 seconds. You think you're getting one kind of product, but you actually get something completely different. But no, go ahead and make your point about T-Mos, I'm just joking. Krisztian (18:56.793) No, I just wanted to mention that as I know they start to earn from the third or fourth product. In the first one, two, three product, they don't earn anything, nothing. Neil Twa (19:03.48) yeah. it's all about bundling. Bundle, bundle, bundle. If you've been on their app, it's like a nightmare, insane schizophrenic moment when you go through a team whose app and it's clicking and it's upping and you get a credit and where'd that credit go and you get this bonus deal. It's like gambling when you play on their app. It's like these things pop up. I feel like I'm in a casino when I'm on the team who out here. You ever spent you experience that right? It's like, where am I going? A ching ching ching ching. And this thing is here and I got this credit and you're like, well, does that apply to anything? And what am I actually buying? It's like, I got more free crap. Krisztian (19:18.639) Mm. Neil Twa (19:29.134) So then I ordered something from Timo here recently and I got like a box full of 20 items. I'm like, what the heck did I just get? And I'm unboxing these 20 items and half of them are just crap. Like half of them break, half of them are not real. Half of them are just like, I got this thing from Timo not long ago and I stopped ordering on it by the way. And you guys aren't gonna see this, but it's a magic cleaner gel that I got that I haven't even used. It's like this, I don't even know why it came in the package. I don't even think I ordered it, but you know, while I was clicking along on the casino app, I think I added it to my cart. because I was going to get some bonus crap, which is good for them and bad for me and bad for the consumer who's playing along with the deal. But I don't even use the dang thing. I think it's for cleaning your car. And he's like, it's the gel thing. And you put it in the holes and it picks up all the crap between the light. I don't even know what it is, too. It's literally just sitting over here. And I got it from Timo. But they are a pretty good case study in how to take somebody from a single product to six products and make it profitable. Krisztian (20:00.729) subscribe Krisztian (20:20.739) Yeah, and they're growing very aggressively, actually. Neil Twa (20:24.139) But I can't stay on their app. It literally feels like you're gambling. It's not for me. If you get on their Team Your App, it's just an insane nightmare. It's clicking and dinging and boxes and stuff just flying around. It's absolutely nightmare. But it works. It works. Well, at least until the de minimis act got killed. Not so much anymore for those kind of product types. All right, so sorry. That was a rabbit hole. We were. Krisztian (20:36.035) Definitely. It works. Neil Twa (20:48.737) We were talking about the main metrics that actually focus on what are two more things. We talked about one big one, which is the right metrics for CRO. What are two more things that you want store owners listening to this who have a DTC channel or are considering the opening of, a Shopify DTC channel, et cetera? What are the two more things they really need to be focused on right now against competition, use of AI, things that are going to give them some heads up today, something they can maybe apply today? It's a long question, but. Krisztian (21:15.374) Mm-hmm. Neil Twa (21:16.397) we're getting down to like, are two other things somebody could do today to really impact their CRO? Krisztian (21:21.625) So one point what I would like to definitely mention are the product pages. As we know, the product pages are the new landing pages because most of the e-commerce stores are now running PMAX campaigns, which means that most of the visitors are landing directly on the product page. They don't even see the category pages or the main pages. Therefore, I think it's very important to optimize the product page as deeply as possible. And exactly from that reason, for example, look at the key PIs at the cart rate. Neil Twa (21:29.185) they are. Indeed. Neil Twa (21:35.917) Yeah. Right, right, right. Krisztian (21:51.075) because this is a very important signal, where is actually the bottleneck in your sales funnel. And the next one should be the cart abandonment rate, because it's also a good sign for that, for example, that for example, the problem is with your checkout process. could also, it could be. Neil Twa (22:08.717) Yes, the checkout. We've been fighting that for the last three weeks ourselves. I'll tell you about it when you keep going. But checkout, so critical. Where's abandonment? Why aren't people kicking through? Why are we having a fall off at the checkout to conversion level? Like, why are we not getting 3 % or 2 and 1 Krisztian (22:13.699) And it's so critical. And it's so critical. Krisztian (22:23.949) At which point do you lose them? Where is the highest bounce rate? Neil Twa (22:26.583) traffic. We lost them. Yeah. Krisztian (22:29.743) So I would say that these two points are very important that you know a little bit deeper what is exactly happening in your e-commerce store. Because if you see only the general number, e-commerce conversion rate, 1.5 % below the average. But what does it mean exactly? Where should you start to optimize? Neil Twa (22:46.433) Where is the problem and how do you solve it? Yes, yes, yes, yes. So our real life problem right now that's been in the last three weeks of auditing every day, myself and my CMO, going into the details and looking at each incremental change, differentiation, rebuilding the Shopify conversions component, looking at the stages of the funnels that top into that and down into the checkout cart aspect, tearing apart the fulfillment connected apps that go to MCF or Amazon where a product is delivered through fulfillment. And you know what we ended up with? After all of that got to the bottom of all this technical scrubbing of data down to the very bottom, our shipping costs are too high. And it's really hard to overcome. So what are we planning to do? What's our solution to that shipping cost? It's unavoidable at this point. There's not another way. We even have our own warehouse. And fulfilling from our warehouse is not cheaper than using Amazon's MCF system through the logistics. And 3PL isn't going to do any better either. Krisztian (23:23.394) shipping cost. Neil Twa (23:44.142) We've done that route. So we're like, well, what are we going to do? You turn a challenge into an opportunity. We show the opposite effect. We lead with it. So what we're going to do is we're going to flip that around on its head and we're going to lead with our weakness, which is the shipping cost. So the challenge to overcome that is now to present it as an opportunity to the customer. So we're going to go the other direction. And we got a couple of ideas on how to challenge that. And we started that process Saturday. And on Sunday, we had a 2.57 % conversion rate all Sunday, where previous days before that, we couldn't break between 1.5 to 1.8. So now we're on the numbers. So now we're on the numbers, right? So we're working on that over the course of the next seven to 14 days to see if the change in the conversation and the perception of free versus paid shipping and the way that we can bundle the products and perceive the value differently, which is not really Krisztian (24:20.889) So it has definitely increased. Neil Twa (24:39.181) anything more technically than how do we perceive the offer to the customer, which is what we're testing right now, will get us above an average of two and a half percent. Whereas before we were an average of about 1.7%. Stay tuned. Yeah, but that's the only way I got down to. So somewhere in your line, you might have a technical problem causing that. We thought it was. That's where we first went. We thought, well, there's got to be a technical problem at the logistics level between the app connecting to MCF and not producing the orders correctly or... Krisztian (24:52.335) Nice. Neil Twa (25:06.465) It's not allowing people to check out, you know, at the right time at the right product. And so they're abandoning, you know, that conversion rate, what's happening. And we could not find any technical problems after crawling all over that, going to support for help at the app and doing all this crap. We start with the technical stuff. And then we got down to the harder problem, which is, crap. Like we have a shipping problem. People are abandoning it because the cost of the product with shipping and the shipping was making it 50 % more than the product. We're like, crap. Krisztian (25:33.401) Mm-hmm. Neil Twa (25:35.992) That is a major problem to overcome. But we're going to overcome it. It's going to happen. Stay tuned. It's going to happen. I'll keep updating. Stay tuned. It has to happen because otherwise it's like, how do we, you know, we have to increase the average order value since the bundles and components of the product. those who are listening to this should be considering some of these things too. Krisztian (25:39.897) That can happen. Stay tuned. Stay tuned. Neil Twa (25:55.358) It just gets down to CPMs and value of the product in relationship to the shipping cost. Now, everybody wants to offer free shipping. But if your shipping cost is 30 to 50 % of the product cost and you can't get past that, then free shipping is a challenge for you. And it's not also, believe it or not, the only incentive for people buying the product. We've been able to add on shipping costs where they were free previously, and people are still buying the product at higher conversion rates. Krisztian (26:09.678) Yeah. Krisztian (26:24.548) Hmm. Neil Twa (26:25.335) So you won't know until you test, right? One of the things that's challenging for us, maybe for your clients and things you guys do too, and those who are listening, is if the product is setting on Amazon and its minimum advertised pricing is also setting on Shopify, Shopify cannot be five to 7 % more than Amazon or their bots will catch you and they'll suppress your listings on Amazon. Yeah, there's an antitrust lawsuit going on in California right now. Go check this out, guys. I haven't covered, I think I covered an episode of that not too long ago. maybe 250, let's see, 266, think, 265, somewhere there. No, it would have been sooner than that. Sorry, I'll look it up later and put it in the show notes, but it's in relationship to the lawsuit happening where Amazon has been holding a little bit of a Gestapo tactics against the other platforms by forcing them behind the scenes, business to business, that we'll kill your traffic, stop your referrals if you don't lower your pricing and make your people lower their pricing to keep us the lowest base pricing online. There's a lawsuit going in California right now for that. So we have to balance that out. increase the perception of the value of the product by simply raising its price point on our store if it goes higher than the minimum advertised pricing on Amazon or their bots will catch us. Yeah. Krisztian (27:33.847) Yeah, definitely. Neil Twa (27:36.449) Some of the CRO stuff that we have to deal with at the end of the day. Dude. All right, man, this has been a fun combo. We better cut it short for here. Now I can talk to you for another hour and people are gonna be bored with just this. Maybe, I don't know. I'm not bored. This is what we live in, Krisztian (27:38.797) Yeah, definitely. Krisztian (27:51.535) Cool. Neil Twa (27:52.773) Anything else you didn't bring up or something you want to talk about that I didn't get to yet? Krisztian (27:58.415) Actually, just maybe last takeaway, but I think it's also very important to talk about. You have partly mentioned this importance of A-B testing, but first of all, to make data-driven decisions. I think it's also very important to talk about that. Firstly, you have to know your data, your most important EPIs as an e-commerce to owners and to make as much as possible A-B testing. mean, nowadays it's so easy to set up and test everything. Neil Twa (28:10.733) data-driven. Neil Twa (28:16.141) Mmm. Krisztian (28:27.831) in order to have data. Neil Twa (28:27.879) And let's all the way through the end, test the pixels, the pages, the shipping, the conversion, test your backend, test your fulfillment apps. Like, will you just go down the line and everything you can think of, test it because you never know. Do not make assumptions. Do not get emotional. I know it's so hard. We tell this to people all the time. Keep your emotions out. Facts, know, feelings have nothing over facts. Get into the data. Krisztian (28:39.257) Don't make assumptions. Don't make assumptions. Krisztian (28:49.903) I think Edward Deming has said that without data you are just another person with opinion. Neil Twa (28:57.163) That's cool. I like that saying, without data, you're just another person with an opinion. You know what we say in the Americas about that? No. Krisztian (28:58.723) I love this code. Krisztian (29:03.479) Edward Deming, he was actually... No? Neil Twa (29:07.403) know about that aspect. Everybody has an opinion, just like everybody has a butthole and they all stink. you Krisztian (29:18.191) Yeah, I I heard it as well. Neil Twa (29:19.288) Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty true. Oh, that's the end of the episode. And thank you all for joining. Well, we are kind of coming to the end of this, but it's been fun. Anything else you want to share? We didn't talk about you. I just think you're super cool guy. mean, I don't know a lot of Canadians that live in Portugal, but you are definitely. Wait, that's not you. don't live in. You're not Canadian, are you? Yeah, I know. Hungarian, that's not Canadian at all, dude. Krisztian (29:29.839) Yeah, that's a nice one. Krisztian (29:41.165) No, I'm from Hungary. I'm Hungarian. Neil Twa (29:49.363) The accent just kind of threw me off. No. You're just kidding. Are you from Hungary? Krisztian (29:51.233) Really? Krisztian (29:58.191) Yeah, I'm from Hungary. Yeah, definitely. I'm native Hungarian. Yeah, I'm native Hungarian guy. was born in Hungary. Neil Twa (29:59.861) you're native. You're native Hungarian. Okay. Native Hungarian. Very cool. Have you lived there your entire life? Krisztian (30:08.111) Actually, I still live here in Hungary. Definitely. Neil Twa (30:13.377) Have you, have you lived anywhere else? Krisztian (30:15.759) In Germany. Yes, actually my second native language is German. English I have also only started with 20 to learn. That's the reason that my English is not so perfect because it's actually only my second or third foreign language. Neil Twa (30:17.889) Germany! Well, that's different. Okay. Neil Twa (30:31.703) How long do you live in Germany? Because I caught the German accent a little bit more than Hungarian. Krisztian (30:36.335) more than 10 years. I was working on German cruise ships for a long time. Neil Twa (30:41.613) I wouldn't want to be on a cruise ship right now if you paid me money to get on the cruise ship. Not even going to go into that, although it would make, you know, trending videos, but there's that, you know, certain viruses and things happening on cruise ships. And my wife and I were looking at each other and we were never going to go on a cruise ship. Are you kidding me? Locked into a barge with people. What were you doing on the cruise ship? Krisztian (30:45.449) Hahaha! Krisztian (31:00.015) You But was a very funny time because we were just travelling around the whole world. It was a great opportunity actually. Neil Twa (31:07.947) So you were a guest on the ship, you weren't working on the ship. Well, you were working, what were you working on the ship? a cruise director. So you were the entertainment guy. Krisztian (31:10.485) I was working as a cruise director. I was working there as a cruise director. Krisztian (31:18.447) Kind of, yeah, kind of showman, yeah, definitely. Neil Twa (31:21.165) What is kind of a showman? you sing? Did you act? Dance? Did you do things? is it just a... Okay. Krisztian (31:25.133) No, not this one, but I mean, was at the conferencing by the events. I have made all the announcements and I was also organizing all the excursions and board programs. So was working with the artists together who have delivered the shows and so on. Neil Twa (31:40.173) How does a cruise director become a CRO specialist? Krisztian (31:42.799) Oh, it's a long story. Just to summarize it very short, after more than 15 years spending on different cruise ships, I was just burned out. So I knew, okay, I would like to change something different, something very big, different, big change I needed in my life. And then I have started my carrier shore site, let's say. Neil Twa (31:44.589) Well we're still here, go! Neil Twa (31:55.532) Hmm. Neil Twa (32:09.633) Mm-hmm. Krisztian (32:10.551) And I knew exactly, I didn't want to be an employee. I hated the nine to five job. I was just not able to do that. So I have started as a freelancer and I have started to learn digital marketing. was, I don't know, 15 years ago, absolutely different time. And I was absolutely amazed by digital marketing. So I have started first of all, to make the first courses in everything in Hungarian. Then I have discovered if I would like to improve myself, I have to learn also English. So I have started to improve my English in order to understand the English language causes. Then I have made all the possible causes behind me on the wall. can see totally 23 different certificates I have achieved different areas of digital marketing. And then I have started my own digital marketing agency, which I have led for more than five years. It was a full-stack digital marketing agency. And now, as you know, I am the international partnership manager and CRO expert by OptiMonk. That's a short story. Neil Twa (33:10.381) There you go. So the question becomes, would you rather be an employee on a cruise ship or a CRO specialist in your own business? Krisztian (33:23.247) That's a very good question. Both, if it's possible. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed that time as well and now I enjoy it as well. Neil Twa (33:26.155) both you like the group yeah Did you do it by yourself or were you married? Take a second to think another along with you. Okay. Krisztian (33:35.871) I'm married, yes. And I have my daughter as well. for, we were living in Budapest for more than 20 years and five years ago we have moved from Budapest in a very nice small town called Venice. It's the same name like the Italian city, but it's a very small town in Hungary. Neil Twa (33:49.901) Finished. I'll have to look that up. don't know a lot about Hungary. I know about Budapest. never been there. don't geographically. I'll have to check that out. But it's a little more country. Krisztian (34:01.231) It's a little country, yeah, we have only 10 million people living here. Neil Twa (34:04.281) it's, yeah, that's kind of But probably a little more quiet. I think, well, we live in Missouri, and I think there's like 4 million people in Missouri alone, just in this one state. So there's a lot of open area out here where we live. Are you on some acreage, acres? Or do you live in like a city there, or do you live out in the country? Krisztian (34:07.247) They're really small. Krisztian (34:15.64) Wow. Krisztian (34:25.039) Pardon me? It's a small town. I would say it's a very small town. I think we have 5,000 people living here. Neil Twa (34:33.345) Yeah, OK, Bob, that's a small town. Yeah. Yeah. Krisztian (34:35.215) It's very calm, very relaxed. For example, when I'm looking here through the window, I see a forest. It's beautiful. Neil Twa (34:39.681) Yeah. good. That's a little nice. You like that better than looking at the city in Budapest? Krisztian (34:46.691) Quite different, very different. Neil Twa (34:48.235) quite different. that sounds like a conflict. We don't want to unpack that. Krisztian (34:52.033) It too overcrowded for me after a time. Budapest. Neil Twa (34:55.243) I've lived in big cities. I understand that. Yeah. We spent some time in Denver. I spent time in Kansas city. I lived in New York. I understand the big city life and I'll tell you, I've living on, almost 40 acres here plus our family acreages puts us in around 60, 65. I like it a lot more than staring at the city, listening to the noise and dealing with the traffic. Our traffic out here is yeah. Krisztian (35:14.285) Yeah, very noisy. Always sitting in the traffic jam. Neil Twa (35:18.087) All that nonsense, dude. And I hate it. I did it for so long and now our traffic jams are watch out for the tractor or the people in the Amish characters. That's our traffic now. Slow down. There's people in an Amish buggy. Watch out for them. That's my traffic at the end of the day or animals in the road, whether it's deer, dogs or horses sometimes you just have to kind of move over and get out of the way. I like that a lot more. Krisztian (35:25.311) Yeah, the same by us. Watch out for the tractor. Yeah, it's the same by us. Krisztian (35:39.449) You Neil Twa (35:42.702) It's a lot more peaceful, a lot more calm. And when I'm looking out, I can see our pool out there and I can see the acreage. can see the chickens and ducks hanging out in our gardens over there. And it's just all nice and green and lovely and such a much better view than the other stuff. Yeah. Y'all, it sounds like you appreciate that, which is super awesome. look, man, you've been a great guest. I've very much enjoyed this conversation. Krisztian (35:55.043) Definitely. Definitely. Krisztian (36:02.169) Thank you very much, Neil. It was a pleasure. Neil Twa (36:04.865) You want to get a shout out real quick to your website, everything in the show notes and stuff, of course, but go ahead and tell everybody real quick where to find you. Krisztian (36:12.279) Optimum.com. is our website. If you're interested, can sign up for a free plan, for a free account, if you would like to test it out, our AI-powered CRO tool. And I think we can also offer a special coupon code. We can put it on later with your name. And then if somebody would like to even use one of the paid plans, then we can offer them a special discount as well. Neil Twa (36:24.205) There you go. Neil Twa (36:28.172) Okay. Neil Twa (36:35.755) OK, yeah, that's wonderful. Yeah, or just give it giving you a shout out if there's a referral code. That's cool too. But definitely guys, check out the way CRO is impacting your business. Check out what you know or don't know about it. Certainly go check out what Krisztian is doing. If you need to know more, make sure you're qualified. We mentioned some of the criteria today. You got to have at least five, 10,000 or more visitors a month to really see the right kind of metrics be optimized. And then you might actually find quite a bit of money. Change between 1 1 to 2 and 1 1 % at your conversion rate is a big impact against additional traffic. It may even make you profitable when you weren't, or make you more profitable than you currently are. So I would encourage you guys to all check that out. Krisztian, thanks for being a guest on the show today, Krisztian (37:15.513) Thank you very much. Thank you. Neil Twa (37:17.357) All right, guys, check out the daily episodes that come out. They are curated by me for all the additional operator topics that come out every day on voltagedm.com forward slash podcast or on your favorite podcast person or over on YouTube. Like, subscribe, comment, help us beat big tech in the engagement. Leave a note, say hello, put a snide comment. I don't care. It all helps. Push it out there. And of course, we have a free sub stack that you can get access to on our website as well, where we give out those daily updates for operators and sellers who want to become CEO operators and build their business to an exit. I enjoy helping people do that. So go check that out and see what Voltage is doing, if that can help you out. And CRO is one component of that on the omnichannel platform strategy that you definitely should be doing in 2026. You should be on every platform you can get your products on and grow them up. So you have a real life business, not just a platform or a single product, which is very important to business and of course to the saleable asset that you are building. If you're listening to this podcast, that is what you should be doing. I wish you all the best today. And remember, as I always say at the end of my podcast, do something imperfect and something perfect will happen along the way. I'll see you guys on the next episode.