Here's Where Your Shopify Store Is Leaking Money (and how to fix it)

Jay Myers: The average Shopify store converts 1.4% of its traffic, which means out of every a hundred people that visit your store, roughly 99% of them are leaving without buying anything. It's actually crazy. If you think about any retail store, imagine 99% walking in and then just walking right back out. It's would be crazy.

You're spending so much money on ads, email, SEO, you're driving all this traffic and almost all of it walks out the door. But. Get wrong what most people get wrong. Conversion rate optimization, CRO. So I'm gonna use that word CROA little bit today because I have the CEO of A CRO company on with me. They think it's just about getting people to click to add to cart.

But my guest today is Adam Pierce. He's the CEO of Blend Commerce, and he says that only a third CCRO is only about a third of the pitcher. So he's got this framework that looks at three things, which I'm really excited to get into. It's how do you get people to buy more? Buy again. And his team at Blend Commerce has won CRO Agency of the Year in the uk, Europe, and I think globally in 2025.

We'll clarify that if I have that stat wrong, but they're really good. That's the bottom line of that stat. So today we're gonna get go and we're gonna break down exactly what CRO is versus what most people think it is and when you need it, and how to know what to test and what specific changes are driving the most conversion and all of that fun stuff.

Adam, welcome here. Thank you so much for coming on. It's a

Adam Pearce: Jay, absolute pleasure. Yeah, you too. And look, I think that we were saying before we started recording, look we've been in the Shopify space for a long time together now, and our paths have crossed the. Occasionally, but good to be here and actually testing to you properly.

Jay Myers: Likewise. Most Shopify merchants, they hear the term CRO and they just think it's AB testing, button colors and conversion rate optimization. And you literally, you won the CRO Agency of the year, and then you wrote a blog post. It was titled, we're not a CRO agency.

Adam Pearce: Yeah, I mean.

Jay Myers: to that extent.

So what do what do people get wrong about what CRO actually is?

Adam Pearce: Yeah, sure. I mean, look, the thing for me, and the reason I wrote the article is because when CRO started kind of, you know, sort of late eighties, early nineties, it was a bunch of bearded guys looking at data. And it effectively was a data science activity. The problem was that with that is that it's, it was quite complex to understand it and make it and turn it into a practical way.

And what happened is that, look, people took the idea of it and flexed it completely the opposite direction to what now happens until a lot of the time when I mean people say, oh, you're the guy that changes button colors. So ultimately what CRO. Really is about saying ultimately, like we mentioned at the start there, three things.

You as a owner of an e-commerce business can pull three levers to increase the revenue business. It's getting people coming to the site to buy now. It's getting 'em to buy more, or it's getting to buy again. And realistically, those are the only three things you can do. CRO helps you pull into those levers when you need it, depending what your store is doing.

Jay Myers: So walk me through this. You call it the trifecta. You have a name for that? I read that somewhere. Yeah.

Adam Pearce: Yeah. So according the, yeah, it is we registered that actually. So yeah, I mean it's, yeah, we, a bit of IP for us as well down the line. But I mean, look, ultimately, I think the problem is, and we did this for two levels, is that number one. When you think about CRO, there are so many interpretations of what that means, and we want it to be very clear to us what it means.

And with buy now, buy again. Sorry. Buy now. Buy more and buy again. Every single business. If people listen to this to show, you would say, well, look, number one, buy now is about effectively your conversion rate. The first time people visit your store, from whatever source of traffic they come from, do they actually buy?

And like you said there, you know, one point odd percent typically is typical conversion rate. The days of 3% are gone. It's a lot more capacity used to be. So is that a big problem? That is creating issues for your revenue. Secondly, you know, buy more average order value. Are you up selling, cross selling? Do you offer bundles?

Are you offering subscription? All of those kind of areas we need to look at. And finally, you know, are people buying, again, IE from a retention perspective, repeat order rate you know, you looking your LTV, your lifetime value, what's happening there? And if you use the right tools. Number one, you'll be able to see, well, which one of those are actually the weakest for our business?

And secondly, if I pull the lever conversion rate or average order value or repeat order value, what actually is gonna be the impact to me on a pound or dollar perspective when it comes to my bottom line? So it's just about sort of sitting back a little bit first and saying, what are the levers that we pull?

When do we pull it? And how hard do we pull as well?

Jay Myers: You call that, is that the the metric on fire or No, the metric on fire concept. Right. The,

Adam Pearce: It is.

Jay Myers: there's one that is the focus that you should be spending your time and attention on, whichever one is the weakest of the three.

Adam Pearce: Yeah, absolutely. Because then you look, you know, if I started with personal training last year and I lost quite a bit of weight, but ultimately when I went to my s training the first time, he asked me a bunch of questions and it was, first of all, tell me about the exercise that you do. Tell me about the food that you.

And how bit the alcohol that you consume Now, ultimately, he was doing the same thing that what I'm doing for stores, he's looking at me as a human, as a person saying in order to actually, you know, create better health for me. Which of these levers are the biggest problem now for me, it was the alcohol bit and it was a lack of exercise bit.

The food bit was okay. So naturally he focused on getting me to look at those. We do the same thing with e-commerce store and get people to focus on the right thing.

Jay Myers: So when you look at a brand's data for the first time, when they come to you, what are the specific metrics and benchmarks you're looking for to figure out which area they should focus on?

Adam Pearce: Yeah, sure. So we would start off initially by looking at really the three core ones that we would use. So on a top line conversion rate, top line, A OV, and top line repeat purchase rate. First and foremost, what we do is we've got a benchmarking tool that I think J will share these of later. And what happens in here is that actually can, number one, see where you are against your competition within your specific niche.

So that's the first point. The second thing though, is that off the back of that's all well and good. And ultimately, yeah, look, industry averages. Benchmarks are useful to an extent, but. The problem is, and this is why I always get frustrated when people say, you know, can we build a site like Gym Shark?

Can we build a site like kindly, whatever it might be. Because look, we all know kindly and Gym Shark have a very specific cohort of people, shark, they have a very specific community. They've built all these other things around us. So once we've done that benchmarking bit, we then go, actually, you know what, if we look at recite in terms of your GA four.

Your Shopify analytics or CMS analytics and your heat mapping that we have, what does the story end tell us in there? Ultimately, what we're looking for is how are those three metrics, what can we pull based on what your metrics are doing right now and what your visitors are doing and importantly are not doing on your site.

Jay Myers: Gotcha. Can you tell me a little bit about this? Let's dive into it. I was gonna ask you later, but, so is it an app they install in their store that, that or this benchmarking tool, or how does that work?

Adam Pearce: It's purely, you literally just hit the URL you put in new URL. You will then put in your key metrics and what it is then doing is that, is then using data from other stores that are in the same. Effectively Shopify category is you to then benchmarking. What it also does though, it uses AI to give you kind of six or seven different ideas that we can see actually from the data that we can I say data, the view of the store right now of what you could do to give you some thoughts.

Some of the things you might wanna start considering from a point of view. So it's to give you that benchmark view and to start you in that process of thinking, what are some of the things that could be hindering our performance?

Jay Myers: Gotcha. What would you say most stores, where's the majority of stores struggling with it? Is it on the getting people to order, getting them to spend as much as they could be spending or getting them to reorder more? Where's the biggest opportunity for the app? Like most stores?

Adam Pearce: A OV. I mean, look, when I do a lot of the I run a lot of the, these kind of, you know, basic Es and it is always average order value that tends to be a lot lower in comparison to conversion. I think the difficulty is and this is what comes a lot of the time, is that because of the general discussion around e-commerce and the advice and the groups and the communities is always about conversion, average order value and ultimately increasing basket size often gets forgotten about.

And I think a lot of the time, what I tend to see, and we see this a lot with the brands that work with this, is that for example, they will have an upsell and cost seller. But what they were doing is that they will leave the upsell, the cross-selling down to the app itself, just to purely recommend what it thinks is the most best thing to do.

Now as apps have got better and as it learns your data, they can work very well. But a lot of the time they are left to be set and forget. I think equally as well when it comes down to subscriptions, you know, look, Jay, a world that you've obviously been a big part of as well is that there is still now with subscriptions.

A lot of people who think that subscribe and save is the best thing ever, guys. It is not 2012, and I think, you know, a lot of the time subscriptions are seen as an easy way to lift a OV in 2016, sorry, 2016 it was okay. 2026 is not, and having to actually sell the benefits of subscription is something that people go, well, hang a minute.

Look, they're saving 5%, 10%. They don't care. They're looking for a benefit. You know, look at us, half of subscriptions, it's now not just subscriptions, it's memberships, because now people have realized that actually subscriptions alone, the benefit of that, of singularly doesn't actually work. So I would always say that a OV is kind of the stone that is left unturned.

People think they're doing it, but a lot of the time there is a lot of weight.

Jay Myers: You. Preaching my language. I love it. Just out of curiosity, did you, we released a new app yesterday. I dunno if you, did you see it by any chance?

Adam Pearce: I haven't yet. No.

Jay Myers: Okay. If you're on LinkedIn or Twitter, but I, we have been seeing this exact same trend. I thought you might have said that the biggest challenge for merchants was on the reorder side.

'cause the, I could definitely see the a OV side. So we, yeah, we've been doing subscriptions since 2014 and we've been seeing that exact, what you just said, like more brands are struggling right now with subscriptions than ever. And it's like it's still something you wanna do. It's not by no means are we would I say that Subscriptions you shouldn't do, but they're not like it was in 2016 where like you would just put on subscriptions and you would do pretty well.

It's kind of become table stakes. If you sell cat food. You gotta have a subscription you, because like you just have to, it used to be like, I remember when Chewy came out with pet food subscriptions and it was like, well this is game changing pet food subscriptions. I know. Like now try to find a pet food company that doesn't have a subscribe and save option.

Like you can't. And but at the same time we've noticed that more. Like subscription fatigue is like higher than it's ever been. Like I was talking to one of my wife's friends the other day I was telling her about what this new product we're launching and she said, oh yeah I canceled all my subscriptions.

I don't subscribe to anything anymore. And I was like, I thought that was interesting 'cause that's not something you would've heard someone say. In

Adam Pearce: No.

Jay Myers: 'cause subscriptions were novel, they were this new thing. I'll have to show it to you because I think you'll love it. I'll just

Adam Pearce: Yeah. Awesome.

Jay Myers: want, I don't wanna, I don't wanna go into it too much, but it's essentially predictive on demand subscriptions.

So it's called repeat. It's like the. PETE. So Pete is a character. We debated calling him refill, PHIL. We've been building it for a year and we've been running it on 50 test stores for six months and literally yesterday we unveiled it. So if you go on my LinkedIn, you'll see it, but it's, it. Uses, its algorithmic first and then AI second, but it does a whole bunch of stuff behind the scenes to predict when a customer might need a refill, and then it nudges them through push email, SMS, onsite browser app, like all different places for a one click reorder.

So they, they confirm no checkout, just on demand, and then get smarter each cycle. We had one store. During our the six month test, they also use our subscription app, coincidentally. So I would say about 20% of the stores that tested it were using our subscription app. Some were using others, but a lot of them were using some subscription app.

Because they're doing subscription. They have a replenishable product. Within five months, they actually got to the same point, 20%. So they have 20% of their customers were on a fixed subscription, and now 20% of all their repeat revenue is coming through these on demand, reorder nudges. So it just goes to show like customers want the product, but they don't want the subscription.

Right. Like it's yeah. It's so interesting that like how that's changed. There's a tool to do something. The need still exists. Like you still need to put nails in, but people use nail guns now. Not a hammer and like a subscription is one tool, but we try to force everything through it.

Adam Pearce: Yeah. And I think, you know, it's like regardless, I guess the, where you're on the world, there's been, you know, with obviously what's been happening in the economy and, you know, inflation and cost of living, you know, in different countries, you know, I think having retail banks. Encouraging people to look at their subscriptions more carefully or, you know, having built in features, particularly in the uk, is something that's become apart of malware.

You can sort of actively manage subscriptions. There's been a challenge around that, but I, and I think, yeah the churn rates, particularly on products that, you know, you would class as more of a luxury necessity has been a challenge.

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Adam Pearce: you know what you've got there. Sounds like that could be very interesting.

Ultimately. That you are selling more than just the benefit of the way you about things could be very.

Jay Myers: Yep. Yeah. And when people cancel one subscription, they don't just cancel one, they cancel 20 others, right? Like they get frustrated and they go through their credit card and they look at all the subscriptions they have, and. Back to the CRO stuff, when, for people listening, like when should you think about CRO?

Is there, I mean, obviously when you're starting it probably doesn't make sense. You need to focus on different challenges, but is there a point where you're like. Now it makes sense. You know, you're, you got some traffic, obviously you have to have some traffic, but what are the things you would say to a brand like, okay, now we're ready for CRO.

I imagine some brands come to you and you're like, no, this might not be the best spend of your money right now or time. But then so when is that

Adam Pearce: Yeah, sure. So I'll break it down for you. In my view, anyone with less than 10,000 sessions a month, forget, CRO. Put all of your effort.

Jay Myers: Unique visitors or just Okay.

Adam Pearce: Oh yeah. So you need visitors. So if you have less than 10,000 a month, forget CRO for now. Your predominant focus is bring traffic to that site. Use your budget, use your time to do that. You know, you don't need to stick your fingers and you can go la for the rest of this episode, but ultimately it's not something you should be highly prioritizing right now

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Adam Pearce: you hit 10,000 visitors. For me, that's the point. We need to start looking at two things. One is best practice, and secondly is also then looking at.

Your more basic appreciation of some of the top nine numbers. So what do I mean by that? So first of all, in terms of Sierra best practice, there are tons of guys like me pulling loads of free stuff all at into our app, best practice. And it's the same kind of stuff again and again. Again, number one. Make sure that you've got things that, or things that aren't too far away from the things that people like me and my team talk about, number one.

The second thing is that looking at your numbers from a conversion rate, average order value, a repeat purchase rate, obviously monitoring those against bed charges is useful, but now what you need to be doing is looking at each of those by set, by actually the source type. Because I think what tends to happen is that when you hit that kind of 10,000 mark.

You're gonna start to see quite a big disparity in terms of how different cohorts behave from meta, from TikTok you know, from your organic feed, from different broad features on. And what you can then start doing is actually saying, you know, from a CRO point of view, right, can I actually now increase traffic from some of those sources and limit the other so that then you don't get the net gain of your overall metrics going up.

Once you get to 30,000 sessions or 8,000 visitors, this is the point when you can start using more tools. So here I will be saying using something like Clarity, it's for your heat mapping. I mean, lots of heat mapping tools are out there. Clarity seems got quite a bit quite now Hot jobs people have used as well.

What this is going to do is time to show you what people are and aren't doing on the site. So I tell you haven't used heat mapping before. Effectively what this does is it shows you a view of look, number one particular sessions that happen on the site where people have been clicking so you can kind of see what they're doing.

And secondly, it will show you hotspots on the site where maybe people have clicked a lot, people have navigated away from the site and start to get some ideas from that. At 50,000, that's when you can start what I would say proper CRO in the sense of AB testing and doing a full program. So it's kind of, you know, 50,000 is the, for me, the point at which we would say, look, it's gonna be worthwhile.

You're doing CRO from an 80 testing point of view below that, you've got different break points to start different things.

Jay Myers: Gotcha. So before they get to that threshold and are there any things they should be doing themself? Like you obviously don't wanna like completely ignore it, but it's probably not worth the investing budget towards it, but are there things that they should be doing themself prior to that?

Adam Pearce: Yeah, I mean, look if you said to me, Jay, look if any Shopify store is out there. Are there maybe two or three things that absolutely will work every time? I'm gonna tell you what they're right now. Now this is down to us obviously doing this with hundreds of different stores. And the first one of which here is invest in your site search.

Now, even if you have a low skew count, you'll see from investing in site search that actually the things that people search for. Are very different to what you might interpret. Now, what it also does is what site search is, it illuminates other areas of issues that you may have on your site. Now let's take a client of ours, right?

They were a potato chip company based in the us. They only had six different flavors on their site. Six skews. You go, what is the point of an onsite search? Now, what we saw from onsite search was that people were putting in the name of the product and then ingredients. So what this highlights to us is that actually, if they're doing that, they can't find the information they're looking for.

We look at the PDP and what we see is that there is a whole block of text, continuous priorities about the product in which in green to mention. So off the back of that, we then say, look, let's run AB test where Barbie use accordions to separate the different piece of information.

Jay Myers: Right.

Adam Pearce: increase in conversion for that PDP as a result of that.

So that's the kind of thing, you know, that will build the more traffic you get, you build. And look, you know, again, the cost of good search functionality is coming down number one. Second thing is exposed search on mobile. I mean, man. If you open up your, get your mobile phone and your cell phone in front of you now and open up your site and go on to there.

You can see a little magnifying glass in the corner. A no bar across the front. This is what I'm talking about. We have done this test now, I think 30, 40 times maybe, and every time you've done an exposed search on mobile, that's increased conversion by 25 to 35%.

Jay Myers: Really.

Adam Pearce: absolute game. Yeah, game changer.

Jay Myers: So moving it to the bottom, like by the thumb area, making it easy to open up the search, is that.

Adam Pearce: not necessarily, not the bottom at the top. So effectively before the Before, yeah, sorry. Either before the error or just after the header. Putting that search bar in there that getting people to the right place. Because the thing that really annoys me about people talking about CRO, they will say, you need to reduce friction.

You need to reduce clicks. And I said I wasn't gonna throw in this podcast yet, and I'm not. But it's BS because the thing with friction is people interpret that as if you add more clicks to something, you are causing friction. Disagree. you are doing, you need to make sure that the clicks they do have to make are meaningful and give them something that they want.

So if for example, you know, like you said, you know, with accordion menus, those are great because you are signposting where that person needs to go. Equally, the site search, you are signposting, you are getting person to a product. That's what we're all there to do. You know, that's what every single eCommerce professional should go do, get the person to product.

So exposed search on mobile. Again, massive game changer. And I would say the last one, I would say that again, everyone should definitely be looking at, considering doing is also about when it comes to your subcategory visibility. Making sure that is improved as much as you possibly can. So what I mean by that is that if you have, for example, in your menu, in your dropdown menu, different you know, obviously sub in there, having visual icons associated with each of them so people can shop visually.

And secondly, if possible, having sort of subcategory icons along again, the top of the page. Also works very well. I guess a little bit sort like Instagram story style. And again, the reason I'm saying this because again, yet again, time and time again, it works. It works. We've done this for a casket company.

We've done this for a bread company, we've done it for a drink company. Beauty endless, but ultimately the same thing. Get people to product, they buy it.

Jay Myers: Interesting. Well, I'm, it's funny 'cause I, I see so many stores that if they have less than 20 SKUs, there's no search bar anywhere and they go, why would I need to. But I thought one of the things you might have said was, because you might discover products that they are looking for A or B, you might find potential ways that people are spelling your product, and then maybe you can if there's common misspellings, can work that into your SEO strategy and or paid strategy.

Like we bid on misspellings of our apps and

Adam Pearce: yeah. I mean, look that's definitely part of it as well. But this is the thing and look, I get very. Annoyed about siloed thinking in e-commerce. I want to tell you a story about a dog in a moment. I certainly can to explain my theme worth, but again, you know, look, that information can be passed.

Passed to SEO team passed the PPC team, and I say team, if it yourself, use it for your SEO. Use it for your PPC. It doesn't matter.

Jay Myers: Yeah. How do you like to get a little bit, I guess, kind of tactical, like where do you start? Like how do you know when you're working with a brand, are you testing everything or is there a logical approach to you start like maybe the product page that's the most important? Or is it the homepage or what's the

Adam Pearce: Yeah. The thing is that when we start, ultimately the way that we work is that our lead, CRO strategist will do what we will call a heuristic review of the site. Now, heuristic is the bid word for saying, we'll look at the site top to bottom. So she will start at page one and go all the way through. was, should be going through, be noting down hypothesis, ideas, things she thinks that aren't quite right. Once that's then done, she's then taking each of those maybe a hundred, 120 hypotheses and Corroborates knows the data. Do I have data support, do have data support? Do I have data support? Some of that stuff falls away.

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Adam Pearce: point, you end up with typically 50 to 60, sometimes 70 items. Generally the way that we work or we get, but like for example, if I show up at your house and I'm a realtor who lives a realtor, no one. But look, ultimately I'll go, Jay, you can add $200,000 to your house if you do these 50 things and you go.

Jay Myers: It's overwhelming.

Adam Pearce: Yeah, so we have a thing called pti, which is effectively a score mechanism. So it's proof, ease, cost, time impact. So we have, yeah, P-E-C-T-I. And ultimately what this does is this allows us to give a score for each of those and roll that up into an index.

Jay Myers: Gotcha.

Adam Pearce: once we've done that, we then saying to a client, right, here's your 60, 70 things, but this scored a hundred, this last one scored 60.

The top and let's work for the bottom. But the other thing is like little house, unlike any business, it will change as the weather changes, the roof gets worse, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Same with the business. So that PT becomes not a static list, it becomes dynamic. when more data comes in, the reorganization of that happens as you go through time.

So that's kind of how you can get to a point where you're doing things that are meaningful and doing it in a way that is gonna be most impactful as well.

Jay Myers: That is, is that done from your history of like pattern recognition that, you know, from working with other brands, so like you're, that's a qualitative score, but based off of quantitative data in the past that you're applying, like you're not actually doing tests at that point. Someone is assigning a score based off of previous work and knowledge.

Right? Yeah. Okay.

Adam Pearce: So you know, with the impact score for example, that's based on looking at number one, have we done this test within this vertical unleash previously? And ultimately then what was the uplift in revenue procession off the back of doing that particular test? So it's like I say, it's quantitatively done and obviously that can move for different types of brands, whatever.

Jay Myers: Gotcha. And then from there you take the ones that is there the two by two. That's like least effort, highest impact, kind of an approach on

Adam Pearce: I mean, look, that kind of, you know, comes into PTI because the ease element of that comes into that, and obviously the time and the impact as well, but. Effectively, what we do when we make recommendations is they can't fall into three pots. The one part is implementation. IE this thing is broken, or we've done this so many times before, we don't need to test, just get this damn thing done.

For example, expose such a mobile, we're never gonna test that again. We're just gonna do it because

Jay Myers: Right. You just know.

Adam Pearce: Other things are more exploratory. IE, we need to do AB testing for. It could work in, might work. It's somewhere in the middle, let's do an A test for it. And then the other ones are pure, are what we call either structure Europe or experimentation IE when we to go and do either things like jobs to be done in surveys or dig more into NPS, do customer surveys, more of the kind of, you know, I guess sort of, qualitative maybe things that, you know, would have a big impact but take more time to do.

And that's how we carve it up and then prioritize our bucket of it.

Jay Myers: If I'm listening to this episode and I'm a merchant, I would love to be to walk away with a couple wins. That's just my, that's just my merchant hat thinking on I would like, okay. And I know there's you know, you might say okay, there's no easy wins, blah, blah, blah, but come on. What are some quick wins?

You mentioned the search. Give us some of the goods, like what you're running a store. What are some things someone should do today? I mean, obviously there's a big process, but what are the wins that they can, that you would tell them to look at right away?

Adam Pearce: Sure thing. So first of all, your call to action button directly below that call to action button needs to be an absolute killer value prop. Now if you look at your site and you have a homepage and an about this page saying that you are made in the USA or you are using a very unique ingredient wherever it might be, all of those brilliant things you talk about elsewhere, all over your social media, and I go to your product page and they are nowhere to be seen, put it below the Dan call to action

Jay Myers: Are you talking about like the micro copy? Right below the button.

Adam Pearce: Yes. Now if you go to our blend site, you will see an example from a car parts manufacturer or car parts spark called patrons that be and still do work with those. Well Now from CRO what we did with them was maybe little bit more depth in that we did adjust. We didn't survey with their 20 highest LTD customers.

And what we did is we said, look guys. You shot with all the time. What is it that keeps coming back? And they gave very clear thing number one was the warranted offer on their products, and it was also the 90 day returns policy. So what we did is we stepped those two below the call to action button away, 13% uplift,

Jay Myers: I believe

Adam Pearce: a OV was up by, I believe, about 30%. thing is, anybody could technically easy. I'm a non-tech, I could go and do that right now. Okay? So anyone listening can go and do that, and equally as well in the age of ai, get AI to help you with the copy. So go and do that if that is not in play. The other thing as what is, I refer to this kind of idea of visual shopping earlier on.

A lot of the time if you go to Shopify stores that maybe have not been around for as long as it, those, if you particularly go on mobile. You will see on the, in terms of looking at the product images, there will be kind of breadcrumbs or little dots or blobs below, whatever you wanna call them. Okay? A lot of the time what people don't realize is that you can turn those into image thumb nails, turn those into image thumb nails if you can, because again, what we've seen time and time again is that people will shop visually.

Actually being able to see what they're gonna go to first and foremost. And secondly, if you can bring video into that, wow, I, yeah, it's just incredible. Again, not technically difficult to do. Go and get it done.

Jay Myers: Yeah, I did an episode recently. Maybe about a month ago, all about microcopy and it's one of the things that like, I think is just overlooked and it's just that little bit of polish. It's

Adam Pearce: yeah.

Jay Myers: that little bit of hesitation when you click a button or like you. Every customer has a question in their head, and it can just be like adding 90 day returns underneath the button, or guaranteed or something satisfaction.

Just answer one question. I'm such a believer in that it blows my mind. I, many brands don't do that. Like it's the easiest thing to do, just takes time. But.

Adam Pearce: Exactly. And I think you the other thing as well that you know, again, is another zoom, which is related to this, is sharing more information earlier on about payment options and delivery. Because time and time again, and you probably had it, O or J, look, oh, well look, a lot of people had to car.

They get to the car and then they're just, poof, they're gone. And then you look at it and you go, yeah, but you're selling a $25 product and then you're charging 'em $15 per shipping. But that's how much UPS are charging us. Well, okay, but maybe you need to increase the cost of your product to show that shipping isn't such a big value because people may still pay that for it, or you are much more open and be promoting the fact that look, shipping is X on orders, or you gamify it surprises.

Are getting people convincing, people like saying that market copy situation really important. Secondly, don't surprise them. They don't want surprises. They wanna know exactly what's gonna happen when and how much it's gonna cost them.

Jay Myers: I just wanna take this even one step further. Like I've seen brands like the pushback is often well then my price goes up and I might lose them on the front end if I put the shipping in. I've actually seen the opposite. I've seen brands increase their price and sell more.

Adam Pearce: Yeah.

Jay Myers: What you're doing is you're making you it's value is like so subjective.

Unless you are selling the exact same product that a hundred other stores. But for most stores, they're like, they're making their own product. So it's a little bit tougher to compare, but it's better for you to have that price, a hundred out of a hundred times of shipping, like in the cost of the product.

'cause then it also makes it feel like a premium product. It's perceived more. Always better to have it on in, baked in there. And then I had this thought, and I've seen a few brands do this. Love to get your thoughts on this, but the negative surprise of checkout, or sorry, of shipping a checkout is one of the biggest cause of abandonments.

What about a positive surprise? Like a surprise gift And the exact so flipping it, so not just. Free shipping, but getting to checkout and or to cart, it's easier to do this. There's apps that do it, but like you add something to the cart and a surprise gift and the analogy I sometimes think about is, you know when you go to a coffee shop and you have the punch cards, you get like buy 10 coffees and your 10th one's free.

Well, nobody ever like with a punch card, like you don't. You're not happy when you get your 10th coffee free. You just feel like you deserved it. You got, you bought 10 coffees and you're like, oh, I'll get my thank, got my free coffee. Thank you. But imagine you go to Starbucks, you buy coffee there all the time, but then one day you buy a coffee and the bar says Adam, this one's on me today.

And like, wow. Oh, geez. Like I, you know, here's a $10 tip. I'm gonna come to this Starbucks all the time, and you might post it on social media. Like you may have bought 50 coffees without getting a free one, but if you felt that you had to earn that free coffee, now you got your free coffee.

There's no gratitude, there's no surprise, there's no, so if you have a big banner on the top that's spend $50, get a free shaker, bottle of pro, whatever. But if you just had it it was a surprise. I just, I think there's something there that it evokes emotion, positive emotion in someone.

Adam Pearce: Yeah, I agree. I mean, look, we've, I mean, a few years back when tote bags were like the thing that, that people did that with, that word's an absolute true. I don't, the terminology in North America is the same. It's kind of those sort of heian style. Almost like cotton banks that you get at trade shows and you know, people were buying them for you know, 10 cents a pot

Jay Myers: Yeah. Yeah. But they're branded. They have your,

Adam Pearce: Yeah. And you know, people wouldn't want for it. And you know, I know a color brand, not that we work with, but people that I now know, and what they will do is they will then do those surprises with last season stock. They'll do it with there's one company I know that is a bitten supplements company, if they have any Stop this short dated.

They'd also then do that with it, because ultimately it's gonna go and get a burning incinerator. But you put it in there and actually they have a taste of that thing, and then they come back the next time and they go and buy the damn thing at full price.

Jay Myers: Yeah. You know what? Another good thing to do is with your old inventory is put 'em in mystery box, either upsells or giveaways

Adam Pearce: I know a guy who's made a lot of money doing that. A lot of money. Yes.

Jay Myers: Yeah. Like it is the best. And all you have to do is put on the header you know, guaranteed $30 or more value, and sell the mystery box for 20 bucks, and you will sell them like crazy.

It's, we have an upsell app, and it's one of the, it's one of the highest converting offers, is a mystery box. Fun tricks. Implement one of those and you guys will be ahead when you're running AB tests at. And you have something that doesn't go so well. Like it doesn't, not every test is gonna be great.

Oh, we tested this and we got a winner. You win, it's a loss or it doesn't win. What do you do then? How do you keep merchants from getting discouraged and you know, like going back to saying you know what, I'm gonna just go with my gut feel. 'cause we tested this and it didn't work and I'm gonna stick with what I know.

Adam Pearce: No. It's an interesting one because look, ultimately, you know, the initial things are the, you know, AB testing is working, it's a failure. But a lot of the time with AB testing, you know, an a b variant test or an a b, C variant test usually means that the, there are other scenarios that are possible that you've been thinking, you're hypothesizing it out as well.

So it might be typically when we come up with AB testing. We tend to kind of create clusters. And within those clusters you might start in one particular area cluster that may work or may not work, and then you then sort of metamor size off the back of it. So I think the thing is the ones that don't win where you don't obviously get a more positive result than the currently is on at the moment.

And I would say this 'cause I see, but you kind of haven't lost because you're knowing that what you have right now. Better than that other scenario you had at the moment. The key thing is that then permeates then throughout the rest of the testing you have, and there are certain things that you can learn and infer from some elements of the AB test that may then also work in other elements of the parts of the site.

So it's this whole thing, you know, like it, you know, ultimately if you're not earning, you're learning, which is a bit cheesy cliche, but ultimately you gotta take the mentality with it because you know, most CRO testing that happens. You will usually get a success rate anywhere between sort of 30% to 70%, you know, if you are very lucky.

So you've gotta expect this. Somebody fail and I think lucky. This is why when you do AV testing, you also need to be at sort of 50,000 business a month because you need to be able to have that again, the fund in your business to go look, some of this stuff is more exploratory than others.

Jay Myers: Right. Makes sense. Makes sense. At least you know that you have that validation and it's a, every single thing is learning yeah. So looking a little bit into the future, what's changing in the space? AI is touching everything. It's here. I know you've got opinions on that, and you've said that AI and personalization are like some of the biggest trends right now in, in the future.

Like what? What does good AI personalization look like? What does bad AI personalization look like on a Shopify store and what are you seeing in the next few years how this all plays out?

Adam Pearce: Yeah, I mean, I think you know the, on the good side of EA. There are tick there. So I think, look, AI in general and then in terms of personalization piece from an AI in general point of view, what is happening now is the doing part of what people do is becoming less valuable. Whether that is the doing of an agency, that is the doing of an individual, the creation, development skills.

You know, unfortunately I know there are gonna be people you know who are listening to our developers. The skills that are there, some of them are going to be defunct very soon because AI will be able to do a lot of that. Ultimately, now what people need to over index on is the thinking part and strategic part, and that is something that AI is still not able to do that well.

It can give you the starting point, but all of the time, the broader picture of view is not quite there. So I think that's kind of the one of them. So if you're looking at a, at the moment for me, would be about saying, and this is what we've done in our own business, has gone and said, look, ultimately, what are all the mundane, all of the data Ana, all the data input, data analysis jobs that we're doing.

As individuals that we don't have to do anymore. That's the first thing to eradicate. Don't try and get too smart with it. Don't try and start, you know, going to n and a and building models and God knows what, and bots and this, that, and the other. Start with simple stuff. Get that after your plate, number one, that's gonna give you more head space.

Be able to focus on more intelligence stuff and secondly, be able to bring more intense things in on the kind of AI personalization side. For me, this is what I was saying right at the start of the show about a OD. This is where this already comes into place because until now, the ability of upselling cross-sell apps to make recommendations has usually always been on effectively your browsing.

What have you looked at previously? They've looked at red dresses and they've looked at blue dresses. Let's sheem a green dress. Now obviously though, because of what's happening with those tools, yes, you can use that browser activity. You can then match them to other data from other users who match that cohort.

Plus any sales data we've got, plus if they're signed to email, plus if they're on WhatsApp at SMS and therefore off the back of it, the recommendations that you should be giving are gonna be a lot better. And I think, you know, for me, people get a little bit icky at the moment about to of AI try on apps or visualization apps, but ultimately these are gonna become more commonplace and I think, you know, any time that you have an ability to do that.

The initial thing from a lot of people I now is, oh, it's gimmicky. You know, and it's just the thing that people have a look at it for me, what that is about, having the person, having the AI and the AR to allow you to virtually try on or see what, you know floor looks like in your condo living room.

For me, that's about reducing your return rates,

Jay Myers: Yeah.

Adam Pearce: is another massive killer to a lot of brands in e-commerce. You know. There's a lot of slop out there, and I feel like in 2025 we got Force Fed AI and force Fed protein. There's protein in AI and everything that we down consume. And I think, you know, it's like sometimes I look at apps, I'm like, do you really need to have AI in what you're doing?

But on the other hand, if you think a bit more smartly about it and for, you know, the core problem you're trying to fix. Is poor conversion, low A? What are the things that, so just take a step back, ignore the noise, and focus on the problem at hand.

Jay Myers: Is there any neat ways that you're using AI for on the CRO side, I don't like uploading heat maps to AI for analysis or any things like that. Or is there any ways it's been helpful? I know you definitely gotta be careful with this stuff, but have you had any like wins with it?

Adam Pearce: Yeah, I mean, look, ultimately the, you know, the tool that I spoke about earlier on that we built the benchmarking tool that is creator ai. Because obviously it allows us to pull data sets that otherwise would be very difficult to obtain and equally to be able to scan sites to see on the top level what's going on.

So that's, I think the first route. I think, you know, with heat maps we are getting now with it, we're developing something at the moment piece software that will allow us to be able to do that more succinctly. The access is not quite where we need to be right now, but I think, look, you know, in time that will come.

But ultimately, you know, the overall issue I think that we're gonna have is that once we can plug into an API, which we can, a lot of the time now, we can get access to a ton of data. The difficulty though is that for someone like me who's not technical, how can I then best tell a story with AI in a succinct way that allows me to take action?

And, you know, I see a lot of people coming out with AI apps and I'm pitch all of them, you know, as an a CO and sort of involved in the e-com community in the uk. And a lot of the time it for me feels like there is just, okay, look at all this data that we found, or look at all this that we can model.

But what do we do with it?

Jay Myers: I know. I feel the same way. There's so much noise. It's like you, I have struggled with this so much because like I tell myself that I need to block off time. Every week to just, you know, play with AI in some way to stay ahead. But then I wonder there's a percentage of my time that I'm wasting and it's because it's what is chasing the shiny bell and whistle or whatever the saying is versus what's actually useful.

And it's you gotta be, you gotta be balanced with the approach to it.

Adam Pearce: Yeah, definitely. And I think I was talking something about this and I said, you know it, it's almost at the moment where we're in this kind of, almost AI arbitrage era. ultimately the understanding and perception of AI is very different between different groups of people. Now, if you are a brand owner listening to this and you say, well, AI, for me, ultimately what I'm saying is, if you are someone who can interpret information, turn that into a story, and then enact the information in a meaningful way, you are gonna win.

Because you know, if you look at the take of AI at the moment. Although, like in our world, we talk about it all the time, the actual take up is just a very small percentage of the population of the world. Now, if you are one that people then is gonna actually adopt it and understand it and use it, you are gonna be ahead.

Because so many people are going like, you know, we did a survey, right? Without our clients. We went out and we basically said, look, what are you doing with ai? What do you want to use it for? And the same thing came back every single time. just started playing around with chat GBT. Now it's kind of good because we sit down and go, geez, they haven't really heard about cla or you know, they haven't thought about, you know, these bots that they could potentially build, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But it just does make me realize is that there is, there's a very different perceptions of what it can do and what it can't do. There is a big opportunity for a lot of people to get ahead of the game here, purely just by understanding, interpreting some of the basic stuff that's out there right now.

Jay Myers: Have you seen that graphic going around that shows like the population of the world?

Adam Pearce: That was what was in my mind when I was telling that tell that story. Yeah. Yeah. It puts it in good context, isn't it?

Jay Myers: there's one dot that is like actually using it for anything more than just. Asking questions or No, that has a paid account out of, I think each dot represents like 10 million people and there's all these dots Anyways.

Yeah it is, sometimes it's easy to feel behind on stuff and every time you open up social media, it feels like there's geez, like different every week and you feel overwhelmed. But it's, you know, as long as you're. Doing something with it, then you're ahead of most people. So I wanna run through a few lightning round questions.

I don't know if you saw them but we've got some here that are put together specifically for your area of expertise. We used to ask the same questions to everyone, but now we kind of try to style them a little bit. So what's the most overrated CRO tactic that merchants waste money on?

Adam Pearce: Changing button colors,

Jay Myers: What is the highest converting Shopify product page element that most stores are missing?

I think I know what it is.

Adam Pearce: Yeah, I mean I, it's the exposed search on mobile that I mentioned earlier on. I mean, just. Experience every downtime,

Jay Myers: interesting. Yeah. What's a tool that every Shopify merchant might want to install this week? I say might, not saying should, but that could, that might help with testing, running or doing something for optimization. Do you know, do you have one?

Adam Pearce: Microsoft Clarity,

Jay Myers: Okay. Is that's the main one that I think that's gotta be one of it's interesting, I saw some report or someone put it out like 87% or something of Shopify Plus stores have it installed. Like it's some staggeringly high number. Like it's crazy.

Adam Pearce: numbers speak for itself and you know that. Yeah, absolutely.

Jay Myers: I think I know the answer to this, but desktop or mobile, what do you optimize first? And I always ask guests, you know, some fun fact, and your fun fact was, you remember what you put in there.

Adam Pearce: Oh, I think, would it maybe be about Sweden?

Jay Myers: Yeah. You're turning 40 this year. First of all are you 40 yet? Or you're turning 40,

Adam Pearce: no. In a few weeks time, so yeah, I

Jay Myers: so you, you're.

Adam Pearce: kind of looking forward to it, though, in a.

Jay Myers: You know what I'm 46. I, when I turned 40, I remember actually feeling young. 'cause it was like you're at the, you're a young 40-year-old versus an old 39-year-old. Like it's a new, it's a new decade. So I'm with

Adam Pearce: that positioning. Yeah that's something. Feel better already, Joe.

Jay Myers: Yeah. So you went to Sweden to take a bunch of ice baths and you said hike.

Hike around the mountains and minus 25. Half not fully naked, half

Adam Pearce: No, I haven't yet. Snow boots, gloves, a hat and some swim shorts on.

Jay Myers: The li the question I wanted to ask is, what's the CRO equivalent of taking an ice bath? There has to be some analogy here. There has to be like, you gotta work, there's gotta be something you can draw from that.

Adam Pearce: No, I mean, I saw the sun and I'm like, I know exactly what I'm gonna say. Now look, when you take an ice bath, there are a couple of things that happen to your body. Number one is obviously it feels very cold. The second thing is you get this overwhelming sense of mental clarity because effectively what's happening is, one, the systems in your body's being reset through something called your Vaga sister or your VA nerve in, in your head.

Now for me, after I've done an ice bath, I feel clear, I feel calm, and I feel clarity. What I would say is the equivalent in CRO is calling up your 20 highest LTV customers and asking them. What they like about your site, what they don't like about your site, and what would stop them in buying from you Again, to your customers, whether that is through NPS service, whether that's picking up the damn phone.

It is so damn valuable, and I have to remind myself my, myself, as well sometimes about my own business, but get the bravery to do it and it will seriously change your world.

Jay Myers: Amen. That is such a good way to end on, I couldn't agree more. Not only will you learn stuff, but. They'll become probably a fan for life too. You know this. So you reach out to them and you ask them. It's amazing what asking people for help, how that connects. So Adam, this has been incredible. I've learned a ton.

You're super gracious with your time. I know it's late in the evening over there. Where do people obviously blend commerce.com, right? That's the

Adam Pearce: Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Blend commerce.com, and if you wanna check out that benchmarking, it's just called CRO benchmarks. On the screen you'll see that. I also am quite active on LinkedIn, so Adam, P-S-P-A-R-C-E. And if anyone is listening to this in the uk I also run an event called eCom CoLab Club, which happens once a month in London.

We have about 150, 160 people each month talking about all kinds of things.

Jay Myers: Amazing. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. I just wanna close off by saying to those listening, if you got value from this, make sure you connect with Adam, like his content, engage with him. Tell him on social media that you heard the episode. And make sure you subscribe to the podcast.

We are just over 85,000 subscribers now. It's awesome. We're having a lot of fun doing this. I'm super thankful to guys like Adam that just come and freely share their information when there's a million other things he could be doing. But this takes time and energy. Hit subscribe. Give it a it means a lot.

And make sure you connect with Adam and check out Blend Commerce 'cause they're doing great things. Thanks so much for coming on, Adam.

Adam Pearce: Appreciate it, Jay. Thanks having me.