Author of "The Anatomy of the Perfect Website" on: What is the Highest Converting Shopify Site?

Jay Myers: Raphael, it's so awesome to have you on the show. You have such a rich history in e-commerce. You've written a book.

It's The Anatomy of the Perfect Website. It's amazing. We're definitely gonna dive into that. But real quick, give us a little bit of a, an intro on who you are and how the heck did you get into this space.

Rafael Romis: For sure. We can go way back to how I was born and raised in Greece, and then I was in London working for a pharmaceutical company. But after London, I basically came to Los Angeles and I was gonna get into film. Wheat didn't quite work out. I was gonna be a producer on this web.

So that's where I kind of started learning about the internet and websites and domains and all that. And through that I started buying and selling domains. Through that, I started getting into SEO. So that's how I started. I had a, an SEO. would call it an agency, but it was all our websites where we just make them, rank them and put ads on them.

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rafael Romis: Then we got into it with Google, and by that I mean that Google just de-indexed a bunch of websites 'cause they didn't feel like they were following the rules or whatever. And that's how Webers was born. So I went from ranking websites to now building websites 'cause I just did not want to have anything to do with Google.

And it started small and then we started working with bigger clients, learning more stuff, understanding what works, what doesn't. And I guess fast forward to today, so now we found our specialty with Shopify definitely where we, we focus on e-commerce merchants and helping them grow, whether it is through SEO.

So back into SEO or. Building websites, optimizing them, tweaking them, using all sorts of apps to increase card values and all that good stuff.

Jay Myers: Yeah, you're too modest. You've worked with Disney, Amazon, Jeffrey Starr, who's who was actually a mutual client of ours as well, way back in the day, he was the. Second highest revenue. What on YouTube next only to Ryan's toy review, who you're also now working with, like you've worked with incredible, incredible brands.

So

Rafael Romis: We, we have worked

Jay Myers: your horn a little bit for you. Just

Rafael Romis: I appreciate that. Yeah, no, we've worked with a lot of different brands. A lot of the studios also we did, we actually did a project with Amazon too on on a show that they did from Prime TV. And yeah, it's really interesting to see how. different size of companies operate and how a lot of them share the same kind of issues and how a lot of the successful ones follow the same kind of paths in order to get successful or stay successful. So it's really an interesting, interesting ride working with all these different kinds of businesses.

Jay Myers: Well, I bet And you must have learned a ton. And was that, what was the inspiration for the book?

Rafael Romis: These period for the book was the daily interactions with clients. So a lot of times when you're building a website, it's, it is a business asset and it is your, your front and your, your storefront, essentially your online storefront. But I find that because it is also creative, a lot of clients have very particular ideas about what they like.

And what looks cool and there is a big disconnect between what looks cool or what maybe I like versus what actually works. And that becomes extremely important when you're talking about e-commerce because you know, as you know, every little bit of friction or disconnect or difficulty in getting to the checkout can affect conversions and sales and revenue.

So I found that I kept having the same conversations over and over again about how you have to listen to your audience. You have to think about how do you make it a great value proposition, whether it's, you know, the price or the benefits that you get the product. How do you communicate all that? And also how do you make it very seamless to shop through the website and check out same conversations over and over again where you know, a lot of clients, and I'm guilty of that too, right? When building a website, you kind of wanna show off. You wanna do something really different. But a lot of times when it comes to e-commerce, that can be a bad thing to do a mistake.

So the idea behind the book was, instead of having to have the same conversations over and over again, now I can just say, go read chapter three. You know, just, it's all there. And I don't wanna just give you the answer. I want you to understand why this is how you should do it. Because you, you're, you're building this website for your business and more specifically for your audience.

It's not for yourself. You know, I, I like whatever I can like shiny gold things, if that's not what I'm selling or if that's not what my audience likes, that's not what my website should look like, you know?

Jay Myers: I love that. Look, and looking at chapter three structuring your website, building the Foundation, Pages That Matter. One of the things I love about the book is it's very tactical and hands-on. You could read a specific chapter, get value from it.

You don't have to read the whole thing. It's tangible, practical advice. And so, I think there's so much in here that I wanna pull out some, some advice for listeners and I think Okay, the, the main kind of. Th thrust of it was this concept of purpose-driven purpose-driven websites, pur, purpose-driven you know, being the myth of pretty versus performing websites.

Let's, let's dive into that a little bit.

Rafael Romis: That's a big one. I think that's, that's really the, the, that's the core. Right, because it's the, when, what's funny is our own website when you look at it right now, it basically has the video of the fish swimming through and all that. I would say that a good two to three out of 10 of the people that call us for a new website, they tell us, we love your website.

We want to do something similar. I'm like, okay, what kind of, what kind of website are we building? Well, I'm a doctor, I'm a dentist. I'm like, so what, what are you talking about? Like our website is, is shows fee swimming by and it has an amazings and things like that. How does that make any sense for a doctor's office or for an e-commerce website that sells, you know, I don't know, makeup, it really just doesn't make any sense.

And yet they see something they like and immediately they're thinking, this is good. This works for me. I like it. It should be good for my website also. Which is absolutely false. You know, as much as I like that we get compliments on our website, it really doesn't work for anything other than a website that sells maybe Phish or whatever, or a media agency that wants to show off some kind of animation or, you know, media.

That's really what it comes down to. So the purpose is the key to determining what your website should look like and how your website should be structured. But it's very, very often lost in the client's mind 'cause they're thinking we're getting a piece of art, so it needs to look pretty. You know, they're not, I think a lot of times people forget why they're doing it.

Even if they're telling you, and I see this all the time, they're telling you we're rebuilding the website. 'cause we wanna, you know, connect with our audience and increase our sales and increase our revenue. So how do you do that? By listening to your audience, by understanding what they're, what they like, what makes them tick.

Not by thinking about what you like or what you think is pretty, but rather thinking about the purpose of the website. Who does the website cater to, and how can you figure out what that audience would respond to,

Jay Myers: Right.

Rafael Romis: which we also go into there, you know, especially when we're talking about the chapter five, about writing copy.

One of my favorite parts of the book is the, I have a little exercise on how to, I'm trying to remember where it is. But regardless, it's a little exercise about how to understand the, the voice of clients and how you look at reviews.

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Rafael Romis: can kind of take what you're reading. 'cause these are your, your audience speaking and telling you what they like.

So if they're telling you that what they I'm gonna make this up, is the, the quality of your product, then maybe price is not that important. So maybe you just stop highlighting your price everywhere. You know, maybe just double down on the quality or if they're telling you that this really helped me do this, focus on this.

'cause that's the benefit that they're getting from it. And I think that something that a lot of times gets missed. 'cause gets, and you know this, you know, we, we found a company, we have a certain idea of what this company stands for or what it does. And a lot of times we get fixated on that same way that a merchant might get fixated on what they think is the big takeaway from their product.

But there is a disconnect. It's very, it's more common than you would think. Where, what the benefit that the audience will get from a certain product is not what the merchant might think that they're getting from this product.

Jay Myers: right.

Rafael Romis: and that can solve through the website and through basically the whole narrative.

Jay Myers: So, well, one of the ways I'll just add, and I, I know I, you had a whole section on that mine kind of mining for the voice of, of the customer. One of the ways that I've, what, what, and I know I should know this off the top of my head, but when did you write it?

Rafael Romis: The book was this published two months ago.

Jay Myers: Oh, it was just that recent. Okay. I didn't know it was that recent.

Yeah. But I, I think a lot has changed. So it was published two months ago, but when did you write it?

Rafael Romis: Oh, I've been kind of playing and writing it for the last two years.

Jay Myers: Okay. I, I just feel like with AI in the last bit getting mining for the voice of the customer has gotten a lot easier. A lot of brands we see will do, like scraping all their reviews, putting it into chat, GPT, asking for it to, to pull out benefit focused language to that describe the products. So like you're selling the, the whatever it is, not based off of the features and this, but what it does for them and, and using, using the, the, the wording from the reviews.

And then also I just actually talked about this in our last podcast, but scraping competitors reviews, taking all the one stars. Putting them in a spreadsheet, putting them into attach EPT and finding all the things that customers complain about. And then, so the example I used was a coffee maker.

So say your coffee say that all the one star reviews on the competitors were that it takes too long to brew coffee or it takes too long and two minutes for my coffee to warm up, or something like that for the coffee maker. So your review, your product description can be something along lines, the lines of great tasting coffee fast enough that you don't, you don't have to read a novel while it bruise or something.

But like

Rafael Romis: exactly. Exactly,

Jay Myers: something to put down the competitor without directly saying better than our competitors or

Rafael Romis: exactly. Indirectly.

Jay Myers: indirectly

Rafael Romis: But what I love about this one is. I'm, I'm imagining that I'm a, I love coffee and I did a lot of research to get my, my coffee machine. But when you're doing that research, you would never look at speed. I mean, I would say most people wouldn't think of speed and I know you're just making an example, but this is exactly the kind of little tidbit that you want to pull out.

'cause it's something that not a lot of people are thinking about, and yet it might be in the back of their minds. Or they might have had an experience when something happened, like maybe it took too long to broke off or whatever. And by pulling that out, it just feels like you're talking to them, which I think is the, the number one thing when, when any kind of customer feels like you understand them, an instant connection is made, that some trust is built.

And that's all, all it is. Right. I feel like a lot of times, and that's kind of getting into a different topic, but a lot of times when you're trying to sell something. A lot of people see this as two opposing sides where I'm trying to sell you something and to convince you to buy it and you don't wanna buy it.

So we're kind of not on the same side. And I wanna bring you over to my side. I find that this is not really what it is. The key is to understand your audience, understand why what you're selling is helping them, and then tenses are they wanna buy it. You know, like I have a bunch of problems. If you're selling a pro a product that can solve my problem, I want to solve my problem.

So you shouldn't have to try that hard. As long as you understand my problem and I can understand that you understand my problem and that your product can solve it, then it just becomes a seamless transaction where you build a trust. I know you, I get you. This is your solution. And then seamlessly, let's just accept the solution.

That's how it should be.

Jay Myers: that is a great unlock. I just for me personally, I just kind of had a little bit of un unlock in my head, like when you said that because I, I talk about this a lot in different ways, in different angles, but the way you positioned it, I really like people want, the reason they're on your site is because they, there is some component of them that wants your product.

Now, they're, now your job to remove objections to any, any, any answer, any questions. But it's not necessarily just to sell, sell, sell, talk about how good it is. But like they, they have questions about shipping. They have questions about warranty guarantees. Your job is maybe to have an. Incredible offer of like bundling.

So your job is to have it's, you know, but that's such a great point, is

Rafael Romis: Yeah. I find that it, it's kind of, it ramps up, right? Well, the first thing is you need to establish a baseline trust. I remember, I don't, I haven't really seen this too much anymore, but I remember 10, 15 years ago, all it was affiliate marketing where they were selling all these diet pills and all that.

And there was a stigma, right? When you land on a page and it looks a certain way, immediately people thought, scum. Why? Because a lot of scums just happen to look that way. So that's where design is very, very important. 'cause if you look a certain way, you don't inspire trust. So I find that. There is a, I have, I'm kind of improvising this, but I feel like there's certain steps that happen.

Step number one, I'm looking at this site, I need to trust it, first of all, and that instant, just by the way, the first screen is gonna look, I either trust it or if I already feel uncomfortable, you gotta trust it. Then I need the site or the store to communicate efficiently so that we can keep building on the trust.

And then at some point I'm like, I want this. So then it becomes about overcoming objections. What is the objection? Is it worth the price? Maybe a good price makes sense there. Or maybe explaining the value even more makes sense there, or return policy or seeping. I find that those are the little things that could make or break a deal, but are also super important.

I I also, at some point in the book I talk about, once you start building that report, once you start building the trust, once the, the customer feels like this is something I want, they still don't know you unless if it's a repeating customer that has bought from you before, you're still building trust so you don't wanna mess it up.

One of my clients looking at the website the other day and they had a big banner that said, buy any three products for a hundred dollars buy now. You click on buy now you start adding products into your cart, you go to checkout. It's not a hundred dollars. Why? Because apparently there was a coupon code that you had to put.

Jay Myers: Oh,

Rafael Romis: didn't make that clear. So a new customer that sees that immediately is like frustrated and they're thinking, well, that's not what you told me. And you might very likely lose the sale just because of that detail. And you, they probably were not even trying to hide it. Obviously we were not trying to hide it.

They had a big banner promoting the offer Promot, but the way in which they we're promoting it could lead to frustration. And this is where, you know, every little detail does matter. You want to be conscious of that journey that the customer takes from step one. You know, initiating that trust, building the trust, accepting that you want it, and then overcoming objections and making it a smooth checkout process.

Jay Myers: Yeah, I liked that concept you talked about in the book that trust is built quietly and everywhere, not loud and only in on the homepage, but calm, confident messaging throughout the site. Product pages in images, in copy, but subtle and everywhere versus blasting every logo of every media thing you've been on, on the homepage, but then it's nowhere else.

Rafael Romis: exactly, exactly. This is, this is also so, and and all. I mean, pretty much everything I write in the book has to do with things that I've seen, and it's very interesting to me when you see. A gigantic homepage that has everything, everything on it. And then you click on a product page and it almost looks like you're on a different website that looks nothing like the rest of it.

And almost like a different brand or an unbranded product when they've spent all this time building on the homepage. You know, and census are, if you're using ads or if people are Googling and finding your product, or if somebody's sharing a link to your product, they're not even gonna see your homepages.

So they're gonna land on the, on the product page that you haven't really paid too much attention to and you might lose the sale. So it needs to be, you know, ev everything, every little detail matters. And I find that because everybody buys things online because so many people use their, their little phones.

To, or big funds, whatever, to, to stop. Those little details make a difference because we, we as people that shop all, all the time, we've gotten accustomed to certain things, and if you miss certain marks, all of a sudden you lose points. And if you lose enough points, you lose a sale. And that's, that is so interesting to me, seeing how little changes that don't feel like mats can actually make a big difference in terms of conversions of a site or cart values, things like that.

Subtle things that, not talking about redesigning a website, changing a few different things. Maybe sewing a different collection

Jay Myers: right.

Rafael Romis: You know, or maybe calling something something else

Jay Myers: Yep.

Rafael Romis: of, you know, new arrivals, maybe bestsellers or maybe social proof, you know, all these little things.

Can really make a gigantic difference at the end of the day, you know, when you're looking at percents and increases and all that.

Jay Myers: Well, let's talk a little bit about you. You talked a lot about how there's a there should be a goal of every page like whether it's to sell for leads, maybe to build authority for support. Why, let's talk, tell me, tell me about that and then, and then relating that to the homepage. Why is that so important?

Rafael Romis: I think so. One, thing that I also see all the time is when

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Rafael Romis: the, again, I'm, I'm talking about clients, but it's, you know, everybody, you know, you, you have an end goal in mind, and a lot of times people will try to achieve that goal right away. So whether we're talking about a homepage or a product page, the goal is sale, sales.

Sales. And so they'll just try to, to get that sale. On every single page, which doesn't really work because when you're looking at a website, and it's a little bit different when you're talking about B2B service websites and leads versus e-commerce, but the idea is similar. Every page serves a purpose and the purpose of that page is to take you to the next step where the final step is the actual sale or the checkout or the post sale or whatever.

But every page should, should focus on the one thing. And as long as the the page achieves the one thing, you'll move to the next thing. 'cause it's much easier to, because get someone to do one thing that it feels like a natural, safe next step than it is to get them to commit to the final step right away.

So for me. And it's different depending on what you're selling, how many products you have, you know, one single product, websites versus, you know, big catalogs and all that. But the homepage should establish trust and should very clearly define what this website or what the store has to offer. No more, no less.

It's, it should not be a buy now. And that takes you to checkout right away. Unless if you have a very single, a very simple product and it's just all can be communicated in one page, then fine. But normally it should. The, the main purpose of the homepage should be to highlight what this story's about and also give you a very easy next step to zone in, into what you want from that store.

So if I have you know, fashion site with apparel and footwear and hats. Then show me apparel, photo wear hats. Because if I'm looking for a hat, I don't wanna waste my time with apparel, so I can just click on the hats. That's the main goal. Get me to click on the hats. 'cause as soon as I do that, now I've already taken a step and it's much harder for me to leave.

Where a good, a mistake that I see all the time is you have a store and they just download a bunch of different products that show you

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rafael Romis: They show you like a hundred products on the homepage. You have to keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. That's, it's very easy for me to move away from that.

'cause now I'm overwhelmed. I was just looking for a hat. Why do I have to scroll through jeans and jackets and all that? But if you just gimme those three tabs and I click on hats, number one, I've told you what I'm looking for. I'm looking for hats. Number two, if you've done it right, I landed on a hats collection and now I'm looking at what I'm hoping to find.

And number three. We're already working, so we're already building a lesson because I clicked on your link and I found what I'm looking for. So we're building and that's naturally, you know, the next step. You find out how you you go to the product page one step at a time. 'cause that's how it feels seamless.

And it doesn't feel sad. And it doesn't feel rust. 'cause you know, there's all these scams going on these days, right. With emails and text messages. Just getting crazy with AI and generators

Jay Myers: there's, there's that. And before we hit record, we talked about how me and you, we've both picked up our phone and forgot what we were about to

Rafael Romis: Oh yeah, for

Jay Myers: opened a tab

Rafael Romis: all the distractions.

Jay Myers: All the distractions. Right? So the, you, you gotta really guide the customer through it because they're, we live in a world where stuff is popping up and happening, and the more you can guide them through it,

Rafael Romis: Exactly.

Jay Myers: the better.

Rafael Romis: Exactly.

Jay Myers: So what's a, what's a big, oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Rafael Romis: I was just gonna say, so you have two things, distractions everywhere. And if you, if you ask me to commit to something bigger, like buying or like adding something to my cart, now you are opening me up to be distracted and not do it because it's not an easy next step. You know, you're asking me to make a leap.

That's one. But number two, if you RAs the customer, they feel threatened be, and that's why I mentioned scams. What I was thinking of is a lot of scammers, they'll call you and they'll be like, oh, this is urgent. Your social security number is compromised. You need right now, you need to call us and send us a gift card or whatever.

There's always that urgency, which is now associated with negativity you're making me uncomfortable. And that's something that you absolutely do not want your customer to feel when they're, when they're on your website, unless if there's also a room for that. Right. You have. You have a product page.

If, if I get to your product page, if I show that I'm definitely very interested, you could tell me that I have a few minutes to claim a special offer. That's different because now, now you know I'm in it and

Jay Myers: You're in the product page. Yeah.

Rafael Romis: right? So I think app sells, things like that. Creating urgency through smart ways like your app that will enhance the sale and make it even better.

'cause if you like this, you might also like that. And if you get them together, you get a special deal. But you gotta do it right now. There is value in that and that feels interesting, intriguing. That can also help build the trust you.

Jay Myers: Yeah. And, and, and customers actually want it. That's when it's done at the right time in a tactful way. Customers see that as a, as a value add, where if you're buying a product, you recommend something that goes with it. Like I, I remember I bought a a mountain bike online, and this was during COVID and I've got a bike so I could go bike riding and And I remember I bought the bike and I'm not a, I'm not a big biker and I didn't know. You know, should I get different pedals? Should I get different grips? What type of helmet should I get? Chain grease? I don't know. Should I get a different seat? And I wanted some stuff to go on so I could put, like my wallet, I wanted a phone thing so I could put my phone on the handlebar so I, for GPS and whatever.

And I just expected, once I went to the bike page and kind of added the bike to the cart that I would get recommended some products and, and there was nothing. And, and then I, like I could have, I would've had to gone and searched around and tried to find, okay, which water bottle holders go with it? Which thing?

And so you're, you know, there is, if it's done at the right time, you're, you're doing a, you're doing a favor. And that's a, it's a good service, right? That's why people go in a retail store and a salesperson helps you find everything. So I think there's the right time to do it, but you're right at when you hit them on the homepage and it's all in their face.

That's, that screams red flag. Red flag.

Rafael Romis: Exactly, and, and you also what you just said, you expected that you would see recommendations and you didn't. And when that happened, I feel like you've probably felt, ugh, you know, that sucks. Right? Now I have to do it. So that kind of takes away, maybe not enough for you to be like, I'm gonna go buy something else from a different company.

But company, these little things can really make a huge difference for the positive and also for the negative. If you, if you, if there is something that has been established as the norm and it's expected and you don't do it,

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Rafael Romis: it looks bad. And, and every little thing that happens on the website can look broken link.

You know, one of my clients forgot to put their social media. Addresses. So they had icons that you click on them and they just take them to the homepage of the website. things like that just look messy and, and uncared for, and that saves the brand. Every, every little thing that happens on a website saves the brand.

Jay Myers: What's the biggest mistake Shopify brands make on their homepage? What's the most common blunder you see?

Rafael Romis: So I think that they get too comfortable that that would be my, my go-to. So, and I'm talking about more established brands. So you have a brand that started really worked hard to build an audience and they, they communicate with their audience, they understand their audience, and then what I've seen is that as they try to scale or as they try to grow past where they are right now, they just try something completely different.

Jay Myers: Hmm.

Rafael Romis: There's a disconnect with the existing audience. It's almost imagine if I, if imagine if Apple, right, apple built their whole brand based on their amazing quality,

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Rafael Romis: all their products based on how stylish they are. And with that comes the price tag that people have accepted, accepted. And that is the Apple brand.

If Apple now comes out with an inexpensive iPhone, like a budget iPhone to get more a bigger market or, or tap into a market that cannot afford the regular iPhone, that is not consistent with the brand. That is something completely different. And I see that happen where a brand will try to get into something completely different.

And in doing that, they're promoting their new thing that they're doing, but at the same time, they're taking away from what made them what they are. And I feel like that's a big one. 'cause then sometimes. You've established the trust, you have repeat customers, but you just get too comfortable and you're like, okay, I already have them.

Let's go see what else we can find. So that's one big one for established brands. And then for brands that are not as established, I feel like they oftentimes, like the example that I gave you before with a banner, that they put up a banner, but they didn't create what would be an automated discount so that it just happened seamlessly.

Jay Myers: Yep.

Rafael Romis: Again, just it, I don't know if it's a matter of getting too comfortable, but it is something about, you know, we built a website, it's working, so now we can be a little less, you know, careful I guess.

Jay Myers: Yeah,

Rafael Romis: that, that would be what I've seen, like trying to get into new things or not being very careful to stick with what is working and, and build on that rather than try, you know, different things or get careless.

Jay Myers: yeah. To your first point, there was, you talked in the book about I don't know if this was the exact quote, but it was along the lines of don't, don't redesign, refine. Small, small improvements over time are often better than a complete site redesign, for example, like there's a lot of gains that can come from.

Small, small changes, and often brands think I need a whole rec site redesign and, and I need to refresh every two years. A complete site redesign. But you're saying that often is a mistake.

Rafael Romis: I do. Yeah. I actually, and it's funny coming from me 'cause you know, I

Jay Myers: It's where you make your

Rafael Romis: everybody could build new website. Exactly. That's how we make money. But I guarantee you that nine out of 10 clients that come to us and say, we want a new website. If I point black, ask them specifically why do they want a new website? They don't really know the answer. They just feel like it's time for a refresh. What does that mean?

Jay Myers: know what, it's 'cause it's because they're tired of looking at it every day, but the

Rafael Romis: That's exactly what it's, that's exactly what it's, that's exactly what it is. They're tired of looking at it or their competitor did it, but like they don't actually have a good reason for it.

A lot of times it works really well. So why, why mess with it? You know, test things you know, try to make changes. Ultimately, redesign it if you want, but do it because you have a very specific reason behind it. If, if you test certain things and you see that going a certain direction is a good idea and that direction is very different than what you have right now, then sure.

Redesign, you know, but don't just do it because it feels like it's, it's the right time. You know? That's, I, and these are actual quotes that I've gotten. Right. It feels like it's time to do it, you know?

Jay Myers: Zero data,

Rafael Romis: too long, you know?

Jay Myers: It's new season. New, new, new redesign.

Rafael Romis: exactly. Exactly.

Jay Myers: Meanwhile, you're confusing your customers. They can't figure out, they're used to navigation a certain way and Yeah.

Rafael Romis: Absolutely. I find because there's you, you can change a million things on a website. And you can, I mean, the right way to do it is to not change a million things, but is to change a few things. Pay attention to see what works, and then focus on that and then change a few more focus on that. But I find that this has to do with the mentality of any, any customer, again, including ourselves.

I'm not excluding us. When you're buying something, you wanna really see something big. So if I come to you and say, don't redesign your whole website. Instead, let's work on the product base. Let's rearrange some things. Let's add this thing here, let's add this thing there. Well, it still looks the same. So it doesn't look like I got something big, even though that could make your conversions increase by 10% or whatever.

But when you look at it, it still looks like the same site. It's much easier to accept that you're paying for a brand new website. It's much more exciting. Right? But I find that the effort involved, the cost involved, the time involved in building a new site will oftentimes just outweigh the benefits that come with a new website.

'cause a new web, a brand new website in a way is a brand new test. And now you're changing everything 'cause it's brand new, which there's a time and a place to do that. But I'm just saying that you shouldn't default to that. You shouldn't make a website's biggest mistake that Shopify stores make. They make a website and then they just let it age for a few years.

Or they decide that time to making new website.

Jay Myers: Yeah, it's such a good point. Right. Well, and how do you know what made the impact, if you do a complete redesign and Okay, maybe, maybe your sales, your conversion. I know something goes up 10% where, what is causing that if it's completely brand new, but if you, okay, let's. Let's do some testing on our, on our, on our, on our homepage menu.

Just our menu. A couple different layouts. Maybe let's add a mega menu with some pictures. Let's remove all options and have just one button. Let's do some tests. Now, you know, what worked, what didn't. And then let's work on our collection pages. 'cause collection pages are really important for SEO. They're really important for how shoppers buy that stuff.

Let's, let's try a couple different category like layouts. Then let's, but then you know, what, what's working, what didn't. But if you do a complete site redesign, you kind of don't know what worked and what didn't. Your menu might actually be worse, but your, maybe your product pages are so much more awesome, so they're increasing at 20%, but your menu's losing you 10%.

But overall, you're 10% up. So you think the site redesign was a success, but it's not. It's sums good. Sums bad, right? So I agree a hundred percent.

Rafael Romis: But at the same time, I know, 'cause you know, I do the sales and I know that it's much harder, which sounds funny when I say it out loud, but I feel like it's much harder to sell someone on continuous improvements and waiting and seeing what's happening, seeing what's working and adjusting what's working and all that than it is to sell them on a brand new shiny website.

'cause on the brand new shiny website you can say, we're gonna build you an amazing website. Which is true, but, and then they're, they're excited 'cause they're getting a brand new shiny toy. Whereas with the other one you're talking, it's almost going to the gym. Right. I'm tell I'm selling you on the final outcome, which might take several months and it's gonna take a lot of work.

But that is how you build a successful business. And that's another thing I've seen from every single, I shouldn't say every single. So we work with a few influencers. They land and they just go wild right away. I, I have a good story about that we can talk about, but for most companies, the ones that are the most successful are the ones that either the founder or someone in the company is focused on consistently and all the time, improving the website, trying

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Rafael Romis: trying this new app, testing this upsell, changing the sipping price, adjusting the pricing, sending a different email.

They're continuously trying all the time. They're trying new things all the time. Some, you know, obviously that's what we do. We, we make suggestions, we help them implement them, but they also have an urge. To try every single new thing that comes out. One of our clients it's called Feature I rem We've been working with 'em for over 13 years, I think.

And we've built them six websites in that time. But, but there is something going on every single week, like literally two to three tickets. Hey, let's try this. Hey, what if we do that? Hey, how can we increase the speed of this? They wanna change things all the time and they have 50 x their company in the last, you know, 10 years

Jay Myers: This is exactly, you're speaking my language here. 'cause this is, the theme of the show is one, one Shopify 1%, and it's, it's all about if you make a 1% improvement every day for a year at the end of the year, you've, I you've increased 3700%. Right? Because it compounds.

Rafael Romis: Is that really what it works out to?

Jay Myers: yeah. One, one, if you make a 1% improvement every day, you will have 37 XD that at whatever it is at the end of the year.

So look, if you can improve your website 1% a day, it's not hard to make a 1% improvement in something. It's 37 x better at the end of the year. It's. It's, it's insane. I love, that's such a good observation. 'cause I, I agree with it that that it's people that are continually testing that it's never done, it's never a finished piece of art that is done and let it be, it's continually evolving and testing.

And I know that there is like some people that will say don't install every app, don't test everything. Yeah. And there's something to be said for that. You could, you could make some mistakes sometime and some, maybe you might do something that maybe slows down your site and there, but I would say the pros outweigh the cons of being like, constantly doing things.

And yes, sometimes you'll do something and you'll learn Nope, that doesn't work and change it.

Rafael Romis: Is still good. You're

Jay Myers: how you learn. You're learning, right? Yeah. It's yeah, I think also too Google rewards sites that are updated on a regular basis in some aspect. So even just, even just from SEO having a site that, because they always have a last, last updated data point.

And so if that last updated is every two years when you do a full site redesign that's not as good as last updated two days ago, one day ago, two days ago, like that, that looks a lot better to Google,

Rafael Romis: For and to Google and to the customers. That's another, that's actually the underlying topic of the book, which is that when I was doing SEO. 12 years ago, what I was doing is that I was building websites on a very specific keyword. So let's say my keyword was black handbags, I would build a whole website around black handbags.

And it was a blog. So I would have several articles about black handbags. And it became kind of ridiculous. It was working very, very well, but it became ridiculous 'cause I would literally have an article about how to organize your black handbags in your closet, to choose the best black handbag. Like it was really just for the purpose of including the keywords a certain amount of times so that I can rank on Google.

And again, it worked very, very well until Google said, what is this? You know, what is the point of a blog about black handbags that has 15 articles about black handbags? You know, it doesn't make sense. If somebody's searching for black handbags, they're looking to buy a black handbag 99% of the time. So a blog does not make sense Thus.

They kind of sat me down, but what I'm saying is that that was then, back then you could pay attention to little technical tells that Google was looking for. You can get enough backlinks and you start to rank. Today. AI is obviously a big part of this, but also Google has become so advanced

Jay Myers: Hmm.

Rafael Romis: what works for Google works for customers.

It's literally identical. I, I honestly, and a lot of my SEO friends might hate me for saying this, but I don't believe in anything that technical anymore. I don't believe that it's so important to have an eight one tag or to have a meta description. I think that

Jay Myers: with you.

Rafael Romis: Google is smart enough to figure this out.

Google is so smart. Oh my God. The things that Google does, you know, you think they need you to tell them what's the heading of the website, or that you need to include the keyword on the H one tag or else it's not gonna rank well enough. Like Google, first of all, knows who you are that built a website, where your web website was hosted, how long the website has been around, how different it is from all the other sites, whether the person behind the website has any kind of authority and you think it needs you to tell it.

What's the H one tag? You know? But that's, that's what's kind of cool about it. If you build a website perfectly for your customer, 99% of the time it works for Google too. As long as you dis

Jay Myers: it's like hashtags. Do we, do you think the social platforms need you to put a hashtag to tell it what that post is about? It doesn't. It, it knows and it'll put it in the algorithm in the right way to and serve that post to the right customers based off what they like, regardless of any hashtag you put in there.

I, I, I couldn't agree more. So, so the, the, the way you said it, I, I see it, I always say it different in my head. What's good for people is good for Google. Now it's not like. What was good for Google is now good for people, but if you're writing good quality content that people consume, that they're on the page, that they're actually reading for a period of time that gets traffic more than three seconds and someone bounces, like Google.

Google sees all of that and, and there's value there. So,

Rafael Romis: absolutely. And, and it goes back to, so the way that we do our ideal client for SEO for e-commerce is a client that has a ton of different products and that already has authority. So imagine the store that is established, they have a lot of backlinks, they have a lot of press, and they have a ton of products.

What we do for them is we essentially create collections. It's not so much, you know, yes, we're gonna do keyword research, yes, we're gonna do all the technical SEO stuff. But what really moves the needle in, in our experience is when you're creating collections

Jay Myers: Hmm.

Rafael Romis: that are more specific and, and it's not just apparel, but it's shorts or it's white shorts or whatever, but you actually have enough white shorts to, to hold the whole collection.

Then number one, white shorts is much, much easier to rank for

Jay Myers: Hmm.

Rafael Romis: Shorts. And number two, when somebody runs on that white shorts page and they see a bunch of white shorts, number one, it's a buyer keyword. If I'm looking for a specific color shorts, I'm most likely looking to buy. Number two, I'm looking at what I'm looking to buy.

So now I'm, you know, you found a good fit, customer number three, I'm gonna stay a longer time on your website. So Google is gonna take that as a sign that this is a good result. And number four, there's a very good sense I'm actually gonna buy. So it's like win, win, win, win, as long as you build it right and you make your site more shoppable also.

So now you go to the sort, the sorts collection and you see tabs, white sorts, you know, cargo sorts or whatever. And a lot of sites are doing that. And a lot of sites are not. I often say that it's surprising how you have brands that have made it so big and yet they're missing out. On very, very simple tweaks that could unlock an extra 40% in revenue.

You know, that could unlock, that could double their organic traffic, you

Jay Myers: Yeah. That, that is a big win. I, I think a lot of people just think about collections in Shopify as, okay, what, what do I have in my menu? I've got men's, women's something and that's it, or whatever. Like shorts, tops, bottoms. But Google ranks collections much higher than they do product pages. There's just in the hierarchy of ranking, they have more weight and a lot of times I just alm collections.

Maybe have an image, maybe they have a few words, but you can put a lot, you can put anything in a collection, you can put any content there. Definitely spend time optimizing collections. That is a huge, huge opportunity. And, and yeah, it's, if someone is, so you said like, when a brand has decent backlinks, has decent media

Rafael Romis: I will tell you why I said that. I said that that would be our ideal client. The reason is we don't really do too much back linking. So I would leave that, you know, to the

Jay Myers: But all of that stuff is, is comes first. Like you, you, you should be getting press, you should work with PR firms to get mentions and articles. You should work

Rafael Romis: I think.

Jay Myers: to get links.

Rafael Romis: I think it depends, right? So we work, you mentioned Jeffrey Star. Another good example is Melt Cosmetics or Ryan's World. These are brands that have its gigantic audience. So in a way that they, in their minds at least, they couldn't care less about organic because a lot of times organic traffic is shopping around.

I'm looking for white swords. I'm not looking for Jeffrey Star makeup. You know, if I'm looking for Jeffrey Star makeup, I'll go to the Jeffrey Star makeup website. But if I'm looking for makeup in general. Then, you know, it's, it's a different kind of market. But what I was gonna say is, and I got distracted here for a minute, but what I was gonna say is that if you're an influencer brand and you launch and you have an audience, then a lot of times the audience will just carry you through and you can make a ton of sales without having to worry about those kind of things.

But, but for most of us, it really makes a big difference to, to have that specificity because it just helps people shop and navigate and, you know, it has the side effect of ranking on Google too.

Jay Myers: Yeah, I wanna talk about you talked a lot in the book about I think it was a qualified versus unqualified traffic. You had an example of a luggage company that,

Rafael Romis: I was about blings. Yes. I

Jay Myers: Yeah, I can't remember the company, but that, but they, you kind of re, re-changed how, what you did on the website, but essentially you've got some traffic to your website that might be like, qualified traffic or, sorry, not qualified.

High intent versus low intent is a, is the so high intent to buy versus low intent to buy. Understanding the differences and then building for that. So if I think right now, if I asked most stores. What percentage of your traffic is high intent versus low intent? It probably wouldn't even know.

But I guess how can, how can you determine that? What do you do? Do you try to figure it out by channel? And then how do you address it? How can you solve for high intent versus low intent?

Rafael Romis: for sure. I think that there's a lot of different ways to do it. I find that a lot of, specifically about e-commerce stores, when they have a blog and they have an educational article,

Jay Myers: mm-hmm.

Rafael Romis: Mountain bikes, right? Like how to grease your wheels, for example, or the, the chains or whatever you grease on the mountain bike. If there's an article about that and you land on that article and I just have all my products everywhere, not the, maybe the oil or whatever, that's fine, but if I'm just destroying you, all my mountain bikes that kind of disconnect it, it doesn't really, it's not what you're looking for. You're looking for how to grease your new bike.

Senses are, you have a bike, you're literally looking for educational content that's low intent. And because, and you know this because you landed on that article, right? You found you were searching for how to do something. You landed on the article, I tells you how to do something. So sometimes the entry point is a key indicator on what kind of traffic it is versus landing on a product page, where in most cases it's high intent.

It gets more complicated if you land on a homepage or a page that this doesn't necessarily indicate what you're here for. But that's where I think it's important to have a good navigation to guide them. So some of the intent might be looking for more information on the features or how it works or whatever.

Some of those more high intent might be ready to buy. Maybe their friends has, has the product, they heard about it and now they want it to. So give both people a different path so that they can all be catered to. Don't, again, just don't focus on the one thing, but instead, if you know that your traffic is coming from a lot of different places, then give those different places, different paths so that they can follow like a step by step gradual process, and then ultimately get them to where you want to be.

Also, a great way to capitalize on low intent is to give them a reason to come back. Maybe by offering something, getting their email somehow, like if they're lining on educational content. Maybe have more educational content. 'cause that's someone that's interested in what you're talking about. So if you get them kind of hooked into your content, even if they don't buy right now, there's a very good sense that they will buy in the future.

So the key is to just make the connection and give them a reason to come back. That's the key. Just give them a reason to come back.

Jay Myers: I always say there should be something for every visitor on your website, whether they buy or not.

Rafael Romis: Yes,

Jay Myers: that could be a download, a PA ebook, A-P-D-F-A video, maybe sometimes even a free product. You know, if you know, you do the math on it, but say you're a, a health company and I land on your website whether I buy or not, get my free shaker bottle.

And what does a shaker bottle cost? Three or $4, right? So I go through a checkout that has a zero, it's a $0 checkout, but it's, I get my, I get my, where, where can we send your, it's literally the button. Where can we

Rafael Romis: I love that. I love that.

Jay Myers: bottle? But now I'm in the system. Now I'm getting, you know, and, and now you've just got a relationship that you're nurturing that costs $3.

But if you start to think how much do you pay for customers through ad channels, that's pretty cheap, right?

Rafael Romis: So that's a, you make a very, very good point. I find that perception is everything, right? Perception is so important. And it goes both ways. Customer perception, super important, obviously but also merchant perception is also super important. I find that merchants are much more open to spending $10 on ads to make $17 in revenue or whatever than they are to give away a $5 product, which is so interesting to see.

They don't think, they don't think of it as marketing dollars. They think of it as free product. Why would I give them a free product? At least ask for two bucks.

Jay Myers: Just put it in a different line on your accounting.

Rafael Romis: Exactly, just call it marketing. It's just so interesting that perception can shape reality. Right? And for everything. For everything. And, you know, different audiences are so much more susceptible to different little elements and how they're changing. You know, in many brands, pricing is so important.

In other brands it's not. It's just not, not

Jay Myers: could you imagine like you have a, you have a coffee subscription or right, or no, you said you like coffee. I dunno if you have a coffee subscription, but imagine if you if you have a company that sells subscriptions and you've got thousands of coffee subscribers, and if you sent all of your subscribers one month, an extra bag of coffee that with a note that says this is for a friend and,

Rafael Romis: Oh, I love that.

Jay Myers: and there's a postcard in there that says there's a QR code in there that this give them this bag.

And we also would love to give them a free month, a hundred percent on us. They scan the QR code and to, to get one month free. And then if they like it, they keep their subscription. But you've, you've already got the box going out. Probably doesn't impact shipping too much. The coffee is gonna cost you a few bucks.

And then you've, and then the whatever the first month, free on the subscription or half price on the first one. I don't know. But you know the LTV of your customers, you know, the, the value. You can do the

Rafael Romis: at least you should, but yes,

Jay Myers: almost, I can almost guarantee something like that, that would be worth it, but we don't see brands doing it.

We see them spending

Rafael Romis: that's so true. That's so true.

Jay Myers: CAC on Instagram, but they won't spend 20 or 30 bucks to give all your subscribers a Yeah.

Rafael Romis: like what you said, I think this would be like a big highlight here because that's a great idea and I. Based on my experience, I would almost guarantee that it will work. Like you'll, you'll profit from that, you know, especially talking about subscriptions. 'cause you get someone that will now become potentially a subscriber.

So you have room, you have, you'll make some margin and all that. And, and yet I think that there will be, it will be so much easier to convince someone to spend $10,000 on a paid press release than it would be to convince them to just give away a bunch of products. And, and I just find that so interesting because it is also interesting how it works on reverse.

You know, customers come to the site, some things doesn't connect, you know, and it doesn't matter if it makes sense or if it's logical, it just doesn't connect. And that's all it takes. Perception. Just perception is everything.

Jay Myers: Well, and I'll give you two more reasons if, for people listening, why you should consider something like this versus throwing money at ads is two. If you have existing customers, they, they are more likely to find other customers like them. And so they're, they're gonna have a better ICP your ideal customer profile.

So whether it's, so you like coffee, you probably have some friends that like coffee, if I give you an extra bag of coffee and then a note, do you have, do you have a, a coffee lover in your life? So you're giving it to someone who is, you know, if I just throw an ad on Instagram and someone subscribes, they might have a three or four month subscription and then churn.

But if you give it to someone who's a coffee connoisseur, who's recommended from, you know, we talk about influencers. There's influencers on social media. There's this, but the, you know, who the best influencer in the world is your best friend. Your best, your best friend who, who, who you see using a certain skin lotion or wearing a certain shirt.

There's no better influencer than your closest friend. Right? And so you're finding the ideal customer. It's the best influence. And then what I've also done with you is I am building loyalty because I'm giving you something like the only way this is getting a little philosophical, but you know, I don't know if there's actually a true way.

There's been, there's been studies done on this is there such a thing as loyalty with brands? Like we have loyalty points programs, but are you actually, are you actually loyal to the brand? Are you just want the points? 'cause you're earning them. And I know people who've bought, actually I was talking to a guy last week, he has worn the same pair of Converse shoes for 20 years or something.

And he is got red, blue, black. He's got every different color. And you might say he's loyal to converse. But if you asked him, he would just say, well, no, I finally found a pair of shoes that fits me

Rafael Romis: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Myers: so he's not actually loyal. Right? And so we use the word loyal, but the only thing that actually truly makes someone loyal is when someone does something for you.

And so, if you,

Rafael Romis: relationship.

Jay Myers: if you did something, I don't know, we don't live in the same place, but let's just say my, my house burnt down and I needed a place to stay. And you texted me and, and you're like, Jay, come over to Palm Springs and you can stay in my house here for a bit and you let me live in your guest room for a month.

I would be loyal to you for I would try to, I would try to recommend every Shopify merchant I had to use your agency, whatever, like that. That builds loyalty. It's true loyalty, right? Because you're giving me something. And that's hard to do as a brand. Like a brand. You don't inherently give something, right?

Rafael Romis: I was gonna say, I think it goes back to what we were just talking about, the, the giving and also the definition of loyalty. I think you're absolutely right. I don't think there is loyalty. I think that there is. Comfort. I think that there is something that you're used to. I like these p shirts and I have some other t-shirts also.

I have literally 50 of them.

Jay Myers: Same with same, same with my black shirt here.

Rafael Romis: did you not, I was gonna wear my black shirt. I wear a black V-neck that I have 25 of them in my closet. I'm like, eh, no, I'll do Apollo today. I'll be more fancy. So it's funny that you're wearing a black t-shirt. But, and I buy them from the same brand, have been for like six, seven years.

That said, if I discovered a better blacker,

Jay Myers: Yes. You'd switch.

Rafael Romis: it's a heartbeat. Why not?

Jay Myers: You're not

Rafael Romis: even if I have

Jay Myers: that works.

Rafael Romis: Exactly. You found one that works and, and it's easy to stick with it, or I like it and I keep liking it. So why would I look elsewhere? You know? If I see something, I'm not gonna be like, well, I don't want to betray them.

There's no, there's no love and loyalty in that sense. There's this convenience and I think that that's, a lot of times that's what it comes down to. It's convenient and I know that it works and I know that I can buy it in other colors too. 'cause I know the dessert, I know it works. Why would I waste time looking elsewhere if it comes to me or if I see something, if I happen to try it and I like it better, I'm gone.

That said, if, and I think points are the very, I mean, the most basic way to do this, but just giving something back ideally more than points, maybe a birthday gift every year, just giving something back that that's unexpected. Customer. Customer. I think that can help build that loyalty where maybe it does feel weird.

Well, okay, I found this one. It's also good. Is it that much better though? I know The other one I've been using for a while, they send me a gift that I have on my desk. They send me a free AC or whatever. Then there is something there that might hold you back a little bit from going somewhere else. Now again, if, if there's something else is a much better option, loyalty goes out the window.

But you never know. I feel like there have been cases, in fact with Shopify, when Shopify, when Shopify first lands, the Shopify Plus

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rafael Romis: they send us a bunch of like little Mertz. They came out from Canada. We met out, they bought me some drinks or whatever in LA and I was like, that's cool. That's pretty cool that the, a few members of the executive team came out and they wanted to meet up.

I feel cared for, you

Jay Myers: Yeah. Yeah.

Rafael Romis: That's unexpected. Also, I think unexpected is a big thing

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Rafael Romis: if everybody's doing it, then I expect it. It doesn't add,

Jay Myers: Yeah. Yep.

Rafael Romis: if it's something more, then it makes you feel special and then you're less likely to jump shape and go elsewhere. Right.

Jay Myers: Yes. You know what it is? So this is basic psychology of, of people. There's a, there's a really good book by Daniel Pink called Drive. And I highly recommend reading it.

Rafael Romis: it.

Jay Myers: the, the premise is, it's like what drives people, what makes them, what makes them do things? And they talk a lot about, or he talks a lot about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation.

And extrinsic motivation is something coming from the outside. If you do this, I'll give you this. Versus intrinsic motivation is you just wanna do something. So like he, they, they've done studies with kids and they've taken like kids at daycare and they've taken like thousands of kids. They've done lots of these studies where they'll say to one kid, if you clean your room, or sorry, if you clean your play area, you'll get a cookie or something or that. And then the kid does it, and the, to the other kids, they, they don't give them the lure of the reward. They're less likely to do it, but they end up eventually doing it. And when they do, they'll sometimes say, you know, I just wanna give you a cookie to thank you for cleaning versus, versus a hundred percent more powerful.

Right? And so, but it was never promised. It was, that was the thing. And so they did it on their own and it was done as a thank you. And I, I think I would be willing to bet that it would be interesting to do a test. So we talk about okay, what if we take all of our marketing dollars and we put it in gift and call that marketing?

What if we take all of our loyalty points and we got rid of them? We only surprised customers with gifts and because when you earn something, you don't feel loyal. You're

Rafael Romis: like Yeah, exactly. You deserve it.

Jay Myers: it, you deserved it. Like I got, I, I bought 10 coffees, now I want my free one. But if, but if Starbucks or whatever, I don't even know Starbucks has a buy 10 get one free.

But a coffee shop has, if they didn't actually have the punch card, but they had some way of tracking it. And if they knew that, like when I scanned my credit card and they, and it just said on their cash register and it didn't show to me. But when I, when I went up and I paid for my coffee and they said, you know what, this one's on the house.

Rafael Romis: Yeah. Oh my God, that's so powerful. Exactly.

Jay Myers: I am buying my coffee from you for life.

Rafael Romis: Exactly.

Jay Myers: Versus if I was just like, yeah, I'm getting my free coffee today. Right. And you know.

Rafael Romis: Isn't that so interesting? What you're, literally, what you just said let's us get rid of the expectation, which has other benefits of course. Right? I'm trying to build up to my free coffee, potentially, but I think it's so much more powerful to surprise, because then it's unexpected and then you feel special.

You're like, oh, they noticed. Right,

Jay Myers: I mean, I would love to do a split test on customers that if, you know, if in a coffee shop, if half of them got a punch card and half of them didn't, and then half of them you surprised and delight them, and if there was a way you could track

Rafael Romis: right, right. The lifetime value and what happens after.

Jay Myers: I, I can almost guarantee you it's gonna be higher for the ones that you did

Rafael Romis: I, I agree.

Jay Myers: something for, right.

Yes, you don't, yeah. So I, I think

Rafael Romis: but people don't do that. There's very, very few and it has happened to me and I, I was always caught by surprise when it did. And it's so nice and beautiful when it happens. Or even when the company, I don't remember what company it was, but or maybe it was one of our clients, but I remember that their plan was you buy the product, it was a more expensive product.

I think it was ski equipment. You buy the product and then they had a sequence for after the sale. Not to sell you stuff, but to take in with you via handwritten postcard by the owner. Hey, just one take in. I hope you're enjoying your skis. If you have any issues, here's my email. Feel free to reach out to me personally.

The end. No sale, nothing else. I just, I kind of care about you, you know, I just wanna know what's up. And I think that even something as simple as that doesn't really cost that much. I think it makes such a big difference, especially if you're selling more premium product, but in any product, like just free coffee.

Just a free coffee. Because we've noticed, you know, we know this here, that that's how you build a relationship, you know?

Jay Myers: Until you build true loyalty versus someone who is just transactional and it's extrinsic motivation. They're, they, they are. It's, it's that intrinsic, right? And so, I think, I think it would be actually really cool for there to be some type of a, of a tool or an app to do this. There's a hundred

Rafael Romis: I can see, I can see a light bulb

Jay Myers: There we go. Let's, we could partner on this. And

Rafael Romis: There you go.

Jay Myers: the, the,

Rafael Romis: No, it's, I just wonder.

Jay Myers: right. But sorry, go ahead.

Rafael Romis: I was just gonna say, I wonder why not more people are doing this. There's no way. This is not gonna work. There's no way. This is not gonna be very, very profitable, much more than

Jay Myers: there are people doing it and it does work and it's just, they're so a good chew shoot. I forget if it's chewy or BarkBox. I think it's chewy. Yeah, it's chewy. Chewy's a pet company

Rafael Romis: oh. I know them very well.

Jay Myers: Yeah. Okay. So, so they have dog food subscription, and what happens with every dog food subscription, eventually your dog passes away and you probably forget to cancel your subscription and you get dog food the following month.

And it's a sad moment. 'cause you get dog food

And you have to, and you're like, oh, I forgot to cancel my dog food subscription. And most companies if you, if you go to cancel it or to refund it, they'll say oh, okay, you can send it back and we'll give you a refund and there's a hassle and whatever.

So, so Chewy said, okay, everyone this happens to, they're gonna just let them keep the dog food. And they're gonna say, you know what? Keep it, we'll refund you. Keep it, give it to a friend. Do whatever you want. You don't have to send it back. And then the, the customer feels kind of grateful that they don't have to go through hoops.

But then what they also do, but don't tell the customer, is they send them flowers

Rafael Romis: Oh, wow, I didn't know that.

Jay Myers: without. Telling them, but they have their address. 'cause they've been a subscriber and they just found, they just canceled their subscription because their dog died and they send them flowers. And some people, the, some people on their team sign it.

And what happens to people who have dogs? They probably get another dog in a couple years and where are they gonna get their dog food subscription the next time? Right. So I mean, that is a probably one of the best marketing dollars they spend, right? Like it's, yeah.

Rafael Romis: It's, yeah, that's, I didn't know this. That's, that's amazing. And it makes perfect sense. I just feel like I, this should be the norm. I almost feel especially for a company that has the marketing budget and spends a lot of money on ads are expensive. They're so freaking expensive. And the the, when you have the customer, how does it get any better?

Right? You can use like the, the example that you gave with a coffee I think was genius. You know, especially for every single subscription company that is selling some kind of a subscription that is not outrageously expensive, right? Like a coffee subscription or something like that, I think is perfect to, to have someone that is already a customer already likes the brand, already uses the brand.

Obviously they know other people that have common interests to them. You're giving them something and you can

Jay Myers: that loyalty.

Rafael Romis: build the loyalty with them, but also gaining a new customer, like in direct and indirect benefit there.

Jay Myers: The key is not to tell them, you don't say after you've been a subscriber for six months, you get, you get a free bag, you can give a friend. They just get

Rafael Romis: Which is the, is the funny part though, how much more powerful it is. The same exact thing. If you just don't warn them about it. This is just

Jay Myers: a

Rafael Romis: If Chewy had a big banner that said, if your dog passes away, we'll send you flowers. I'm like, eh, why do I want your flowers? I don't even want your flowers.

Just, you know, I'm sad. Just let be, but without saying it, you all of a sudden during that time, you get the flowers and you're like, wow. They actually care. This company, that this want my money, they actually care. And that, that's when truly license are born. Because it's unexpected and because it's, it's actually thoughtful.

I mean, matter of fact, it's a thoughtful action. You're not doing it. Maybe there is, you know? Yes. Is is it potential gonna be profitable? Yes. But you're not guaranteed that. And I think that also says a lot, right? It's one thing to say to someone, we'll do this if you do that, 'cause then it's a transaction.

No, we'll just give you the flowers, we'll give you the free coffee. You do with it what you want. You know, there's so much power in that.

Jay Myers: totally, and at least, you know, even if they don't buy something, at least they got a free bag of coffee versus if you spend 60 bucks to get someone to click through on an Instagram ad.

Rafael Romis: Right.

Jay Myers: There's nothing, there's no value exchange there. So it's better, at least there's some value in the hand versus giving more money to meta.

So

Rafael Romis: percent to

Jay Myers: it's a

Rafael Romis: someone that you

Jay Myers: whoever else. Exactly. Yeah. Put into the hand. So, we could definitely go on and on about some things. I I think we probably only chatted about two or three of your chapters in your book. I got, I, there's a lot. We're, you know what we're definitely, we should do a another episode at some point.

I had, think 10 things I wanted to talk to, and I kind of got through about two, so that's good. That's, that's how, that's how it goes. Before we wrap up here, we're I loved your book, by the way. I think it's a great read. I think it's the thing I like about it is you could literally pick a chapter and read it, read the title, feel if it applies to you.

I'm a big fan of. Just in time knowledge. I, I think versus just in case knowledge, I think, I think we often read every book, listen to everything, and we're like, we build all this knowledge 'cause we think we need to, but then, but when the time you need it, so okay, right now you're working on your website, go to these resources like you're working on your homepage.

Here's this you need just in time knowledge, not just in case. And I, I think your book is structured very well that way, so you don't even have to read the whole book. You could literally read one of the chapters, so

Rafael Romis: Yes. I always, I mean, I say obviously I'm a little biased, but I would say that it's a good read to anyone that has a store because I feel like they might. See their store from a different perspective. And again, perspective is everything. So I think it's important to understand what goes on in your store.

Don't just do something because you saw some other very successful site doing it, which is another, you know, again, we could talk forever, right? And I'd love to do another, another episode together. But another big thing that I see is they come to us and they say, let's make it like them. They're crushing it.

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Rafael Romis: Okay? But if it's not the same audience, if it's not the same kind of product, or even if it is the same audience to the same product, if your value proposition is different, it's just not the same. You know, some things could apply to more than one store, but you cannot just copy someone because they happen to be successful.

Just like you know, an influencer website, I could tell you Jeff Star does several millions of dollars. It doesn't mean that the same website for a brand new brand would do millions of dollars. Not, there's no 10 would, right?

Jay Myers: percent. Yeah.

Rafael Romis: So it's so, so misleading to look at the success of someone else and assume what it is that made them very successful.

But I feel like that's one thing that I try to do in the book. I try to kind of highlight the different aspects of a, of a website, you know, navigation, structure, copy, intent, all that good stuff. So that people start thinking of it through the perce perception, the perspective of their customers rather than their own or their own beliefs.

'cause we have the data now. Right. You mentioned the ai. I feel like. I love, you know, I love ai. I use AI all the time. I try to use it to help me do things faster, but I also know that there is a risk in doing that, in, in missing something that's important, especially when it comes to mining the voice of your customers.

I think it's important to actually read what they're saying, read it, read specifically how they're saying it, try to feel it, and then take what you can from it instead of just me coming to you and saying, oh, everybody talks about that. Okay, but how are they talking about it? Is that really the most important takeaway?

Jay Myers: totally.

Rafael Romis: That there's a big difference in that? But yeah, I would say anyone that has a store or is thinking of a redesign or wants to make changes to their site, I think it's important to read it so that they can understand how to think about it. Whether they do it by themselves or they engage in it, it's, it doesn't even matter as long as you understand.

There should be intent, be behind your every action, essentially. Intent behind every action. I think that's key.

Jay Myers: So where do people go? Where do people find it?

Rafael Romis: So they can, if they want the book, they can find it on Amazon, on bars and Noble, there's a few stores. The Anatomy of the Perfect

Jay Myers: The Anatomy of a Perfect website. Just any of the bookstores. There's no direct website for the book.

Rafael Romis: No, we didn't make a website for the book yet. Maybe we'll make one, but for now, just Amazon

Jay Myers: Search it on Amazon. I'll put in a link in Amazon. I'm not even an Amazon affiliate. I don't even, I'll just link, just link to

Rafael Romis: It's funny, I'm an Amazon affiliate from 20 years ago, but

Jay Myers: I'll use, I'll

Rafael Romis: getting an email.

Jay Myers: No, you probably can't be an affiliate on your own book, can you?

Rafael Romis: I'm not sure, I don't haven't logged into that Amazon affiliate account for more than 10 years. I dunno, right now it's

Jay Myers: Double dipping.

Rafael Romis: selected.

Jay Myers: And then Weber W-E-B-E-R-O-U s.com is your, your agent, your main agency.

Rafael Romis: Agency? Yes.

Jay Myers: And then lastly, what, what social media platforms are you active on that I

Rafael Romis: I would say Instagram and LinkedIn would be the main one. So Instagram would be, my name is Rafael Rames, and then LinkedIn again, just my

Jay Myers: Okay. And I'll add that, I'll add it to the show notes as well. Okay. We are definitely gonna do another episode at some point. This was so much, so much fun. And when I'm in Palm Springs, I expect an invite to your pool

Rafael Romis: You got it Both. We'll do both right then.

Jay Myers: Awesome. Thank you so much.

Rafael Romis: Thank you. Thank you for having me.