From Data Overwhelm to Actionable Insights: Mastering eCommerce Analytics with Jeff Sauer

In this illuminating episode of the eCommerce Podcast, host Matt Edmundson chats with Jeff Sauer, the self-described "data whisperer" and founder of Measure Marketing Group. They explore how eCommerce business owners can transform intimidating data analytics into powerful strategic assets for business growth, helping you shift from data overload to data-driven decisions that directly impact your bottom line.

I wonder if you, like many eCommerce entrepreneurs, feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data available? Jeff reveals how to cut through the noise and focus on the metrics that actually matter for your business growth.

Key Takeaways:

1. Focus on the critical 20%: Jeff points out that most businesses only ever use 10-20% of the data they collect. Instead of trying to understand everything, configure that crucial percentage to give you exactly what you need.

2. Data is a profit center, not an expense: When properly implemented, analytics should help you identify opportunities and plug leaks in your sales funnel, paying for itself many times over.

3. The Measurement Marketing Framework: Rather than being overwhelmed by dashboards, focus on tracking the user journey - did visitors scroll past the fold? Did they see your call to action? Did they take the desired action?

4. Google Analytics 4 requires configuration: Without proper setup, GA4 provides limited value. However, its integration with other Google products makes it essential for most eCommerce businesses.

5. AB testing alternatives: For smaller sites without massive traffic, focus on fixing obvious problems rather than testing variations. As Jeff says, "Would you AB test whether to plug a hole in a leaking funnel, or would you just plug it?"

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Wondering if your eCommerce business is ready for a dedicated data analyst? Jeff suggests that when you reach about 10 employees with two in marketing, your third marketing hire should probably be an analyst.

For more information on mastering eCommerce analytics, including free resources, tools, and training programs, visit our website.

Visit measureu.com to access Jeff's free community with resources, tools, and workshops on eCommerce analytics.

So welcome to the eCommerce podcast with

me, your host, Matt Edmundson.

This is a show helping you deliver e-commerce.

Wow.

That's what we want to do.

That's why we are here.

I am here to learn about e-commerce.

As much as you are, and we're gonna be talking to

the wonderful Jeff Sauer today, uh, about how we,

how we do all kinds of weird and wonderful things to help

grow our e-com business.

But before we get into that, lemme give a shout out to you.

If this is your first time with us, lemme, there we go.

Sorry.

It's just in my seat.

Uh, shout out if this is your first time with us.

It's great that you are here.

Hope you like the show.

Hope you get a lot out of it.

Uh, and if you are like me, you run your own e-com businesses.

I would genuinely love to hear from you.

Come check me out on social media.

You can find me on LinkedIn to search for Matt Edmondson.

Uh, and I will be there.

The link will be in the show notes, uh, which is

usually on your podcast app.

But come find me, come say hello, tell me your story.

We are doing this thing, uh, where we are actively now

seeking more founders to come on the show and tell their stories.

We've got quite a few lined up, which I'm very excited about.

Um, but if you are a founder, if you run your own e-com.

Business.

You know, you've got your own store, whether you are running

it as a part-time side hustle, whether this is your full-time

gig, whether you've turned over a hundred grand, whether

you've turned over 10 million, I would love to talk to you.

Would love to find out your story, and if you're up for it,

come share it on the podcast.

I promise.

I'll be kind.

I'm always kind as you know, if you're a regular to the show.

Um, but it would be genuinely great to hear from you.

So do get in touch.

Come find me on LinkedIn or you can reach out to me through the

website eCommerce podcast.net.

There's a little thing on there.

Just fill that in, uh, and get in touch.

We'd love to hear from you.

So that's the plug over with.

Let's talk about today's guest, uh, and jump into it, shall we?

Jeff Sauer is the Data Whisperer, which I just,

Jeff, I dunno if that's your general title, but

actually I really like it.

The Data Whisperer of Digital Marketing and Founder of

Measure Holding Group, where he has transformed thousands.

Of marketers into analytics ninjas through his

training and consulting.

So we're in the dojo today, ladies and gentlemen, when

he's not jet setting around the world as a digital nomad.

You can find this top 25 PPC expert spreading the gospel

of data-driven marketing at major industry conferences,

uh, helping businesses turn numbers into gold.

That was a good intro that Jeff.

I like that.

How you doing?

I love it.

I've never been called a data whisperer.

I, I'm not sure how my ninja skills are right now, but

overall, I wanna get you all excited about, about this idea

of measuring your measuring 'cause that is something I'm

very passionate about and that is pretty much, I've dedicated

my career to it because it was finally seeing the light.

When everything seemed dark at one point in my career,

uh, numbers got me out of it.

And that might sound like the craziest thing you've

ever heard, but hopefully by the end of this episode,

we all feel the same way.

We feel empowered to look at this stuff and turn it

into a positive versus just something that doesn't make

sense or intimidates you.

I. Fantastic.

I'm looking forward to the conversation because I think

data's always interesting and analytics is always

interesting, and I think for a lot of people, analytics is

a little bit kind of black, artsy, um, and, and quite scary.

So it'll be good to get into that, um, and start to

understand it a little bit more.

I think I, I, I remember hearing a quote, Jeff, and I don't

know, I genuinely don't know if this is an attributable quote.

Um.

I should probably Google it and find out.

Uh, I'm sure someone will let me know, but, um, but there's a, a

quote that I've heard that goes, that says something like this.

I think it was Einstein that said it.

If I was given a problem, I would spend 95% of my

time defining the problem and 5% on the solution.

Now the percentage may have changed.

It'll be different.

There is this, this idea, I think of.

When you are faced with a problem devoting a large amount

of time to clearly understanding the problem and defining it

gives you the majority of the solution that you need.

And this is where, for me, data and analytics can actually be

your friend, especially in the world of e-commerce, because we

measure absolutely everything.

Um, well, it seems we measure absolutely everything.

Uh.

So, yeah, I'm, I'm kind of curious with the whole thing.

You said you've got a passion for it, you've

gotta look for it.

Was that just from birth?

Was this as a result of some cosmic coincidence, or was

it because actually something happened and you needed to start

getting your head around data?

Yeah, so I'll, I'll, I love the quote I, I,

you made me, you're reminded me of one, if you have an hour

to chop down a tree, spend 45 minutes sharpening your ax.

Yeah,

yeah.

Similar, right?

And that is, I

think that was from the seven

habits, wasn't it?

The seven habits.

Yeah.

But yeah, so

I mean, the, the concept is true though, right?

Like the more strategy you have, the more you think about

these things, the less mm-hmm.

Of a technical problem, it becomes, yeah.

Now the funny thing is, how I got into this thing was purely

based on technical merit.

Uh, so I graduated with a computer science degree.

I thought I was just gonna be a computer

programmer my whole life.

Um, got into some debt and I had to make money and so I

started becoming like a low end frontend website developer.

Mm-hmm.

And just making websites for people 'cause I

could do that and I.

Was decent at it, but not great.

Mm-hmm.

And, but it was paying the bills.

And then finally I made a website for somebody who

said, Hey Jeff, thanks for the website, but I don't

really think it's, I'm not gonna pay you because I'm not

making any money off of it.

Oh, wow.

Help me make money off this thing so I can pay

you for the website.

Yeah.

And I was like, well, how do you do that?

So I looked into things like paid it, paid ads.

Mm-hmm.

SEO.

Mm-hmm.

Um.

Finally arrived at this thing called stats, which

eventually became analytics.

And ultimately that was the only thing I could use

that would help me figure out how to make this guy

money in order to get paid.

And so that this was, yeah, that was sort of the, the

whole background was it, is that I couldn't, nothing

else was accountable.

The only thing that was accountable was

looking at the numbers.

I. Seeing what the numbers said and then using the

numbers to leverage it so you could get more of the

result you were looking for.

Yeah.

Basically saying, this is positive, this is, this

is not working so well.

Let's put all of our effort into this.

Which, um, even though the Pareto principle has been around

forever, the idea of 80 20, um, that was my first introduction

to 80 20 being a real thing.

Mm-hmm.

And being something that was.

Shifting that, that actually could make money, right?

Like you can read about something in math and that

sounds cool, but when you're actually talking about somebody

making money off their website because you 80 20 something,

because you had the numbers to point it out, that was magical.

And so it was the first time that I really felt accepted

and that I belonged in that world because, um, I took

this, this technical thing and turned it into something

that made somebody money.

And it turns out that I'm a lot better at making people money

than I am at being technical.

So, um, and so that's where I ended up finding a career.

A career.

Mm-hmm.

Let's just call that a career.

And then there's been a lot of phases in the career.

I'll, I'll love to get into those, but, um, that's sort

of the genesis story of how I became a numbers guy.

Um, even though, and, and I had the, you know, I, I had the

education to become a numbers guy, but it was really in

the field that got me there.

So I, I'm curious, what, what, once you

sort of started to get your head around the analytics for

this guy that wasn't making any money, what did you

learn and what did you do?

How did you turn his side around?

Yeah, I mean sometimes it's, it's like

the most obvious solution is the answer, and that

is ride the hot hand.

Figure out what's working and then double down

on it, do more of that.

And this is any e-commerce store owner that's out there, anybody

who's, who's got some kind of momentum, um, the data will tell

you how you've succeeded in the past, and then you can do some

kind of extrapolation to say, okay, I can go do more of this.

Mm-hmm.

The reality is that 80 20 is just like a never ending thing.

It's everywhere around you at all times.

And that is that most of the things you do aren't gonna work.

You gotta grow a thick skin in order to understand that.

And then the few things that do work.

They work extremely well.

Mm-hmm.

And they, they end up being your payback on payback

on everything you do.

So it could be a couple skews that perform well for you.

Yeah.

It could be any one of those things.

That's usually how it is now.

We all want things to be different.

We all want it to be more sustainable.

We want to have a portfolio play.

We wanna hedge our bets.

And there's, there's merit in doing that.

But the reality is that it's still gonna be, uh, a handful

of things that, that work really well and analytics just

helps you get there faster.

Um, and now we're getting better to the point where

it can actually predict what's gonna happen.

It can predict behaviors.

There's all kinds of things that are happening where if

you feed the data into these.

Um, machine learning algorithms into this,

into the big data Yeah.

Pipeline, into meta's algorithms, into, you know,

into their, their systems, into Google systems.

It's ultimately, they're, they're gonna use all the

power to find 80 twenties that you never even dreamed of.

Yeah.

That, to find the things that are working and that's, that's

ultimately how the entire ecosystem works of advertising

and, and analytics now, is that you are constantly feeding

your results and then they're constantly trying to get you

more of the same results.

Yeah, that's a fair point.

It, and, and it's, I I think it's gonna be that

way for a little while.

I mean, I know we're living in a new world order now,

um, but I think some of these principles sort of

stay the same, don't they?

I'm curious, uh, Jeff, I mean, you, you sound like

quite a knowledgeable chap in this whole area.

Let's, let's deal maybe with the big elephant in the room, right?

In the sense that when it comes to analytics, whether it be.

Um, Google Analytics you're looking at, whether it's a

dashboard from the platform.

I'm a big fan of a platform that's done by sweet analytics

guy called Oliver Sparks been on the show, um, British guy

who's created that problem.

Uh, problem created that platform problem and platform.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so we, we've used that in the past.

Um, and still use that today.

I guess my, my observation is now because it is so

easy to measure everything.

We do measure everything.

How do we avoid the overwhelm of data?

Because it, it, I sometimes I just look at things and go,

I just dunno where to start.

Yeah.

Well, there's a, there's a lot of different ways

and so I, I'd, I'd love to, to help everybody figure that out.

First thing is, and this is just back to the origin

story and the evolution.

When I first started teaching this stuff almost 20 years ago.

I was teaching technical things, I was telling somebody where

to, where to click a button, how do you, how to put JavaScript

on your site, how to, how to get code access to your

site and put stuff on there.

And that was pretty much every conversation we had.

Um, thankfully that's not really necessary anymore.

There's lots of ways to get the code on your site and to track

things and, and it's easier to collect data than ever before.

Mm-hmm.

Now that's, that's positive from a not as intimidating.

Yeah.

But then it just creates another level of intimidation.

Yeah.

And that is now data overload.

Mm-hmm.

Data deluge, just so much of it.

Big data, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, just so much to choose from that you don't even

know what matters anymore.

These dashboards have all these indicators.

Mm-hmm.

Almost like an airplane.

Mm-hmm.

Plane cockpit as opposed to like the dashboard of a car.

Yeah, right.

A car dashboard.

It's pretty obvious.

You need to put gas in the car, you're going, your engine's too

hot and you're going too fast.

Mm-hmm.

Um, an airplane one has, you know, it's, it's

much more than that.

And so that's, that's what ends up happening right now.

Mm-hmm.

Um.

The thing is most people aren't driving airplanes.

They're not flying airplanes.

And, and you know, if you get into e-commerce, uh, you know,

just as a, as a business, you don't, you didn't get into

this thing to fly airplanes.

You got into this thing to, to drive a car, right.

To drive from one point to the other.

And so one thing is.

Instead of having the airplane dashboard and having everything

possible, all these instruments that you don't need realize

that you're, that you're in a car and, and, and simplify it.

And so, again, I, I hate to say 80 20 all the time,

but it ends up usually being about the ratio.

Yeah.

Um, I always tell people that in Google Analytics, I.

You think you need a hundred percent of the data, you'll

only ever look at 2010 to 20% of the data you collect.

And, and I'd rather have you spend time configuring

that 10 to 20% mm-hmm.

To give you exactly what you need as opposed to spending

that time trying to understand all 100% of what you have.

Yeah.

And so the way that we help people with that is we, we

actually developed our own framework called the Measurement

Marketing Framework at Measure U. And that basically tells you.

Ask the right questions about what you want this data to do.

What are, what is what, what do I need this thing to tell me?

Mm-hmm.

Is it that you're tracking like a product detail page

and you wanna see where people drop off and whether

they're looking at it or not?

Is it that you wanna track your cart and if they're dropping off

in the cart, is it like how you, you have to basically figure

out what behavior you're trying to track, get to that level.

Like what am I trying to solve?

Now the good news is that you need analytics in order to

know that you have a problem.

Like if you look at your, your card abandonment rate is 98%

and you're expecting it to be 60% that all the, the data is

telling you where to focus.

Yeah.

So it's already telling you where to go.

Then within that area, there's, if, once you identify

the problem, it's actually pretty easy to solve it.

Hmm.

It is.

When you're trying to solve everything, uh, all at once,

that, that becomes a problem.

So is your problem, your homepage?

Is your problem, your traffic source is your problem.

The product detail page is your problem, your

cart, is it checkout?

Is it all these different things?

Ultimately using data will help you to decide where things are.

It could be everything.

Mm mm Chances are it's not everything.

It's usually one thing that's a lowest hanging fruit and, and

usually, you know, the analytics tool helps you identify the low

hanging fruit for your business.

Mm-hmm.

Then you just keep on picking it.

I've never actually had to get a ladder out, you know

what, you know what I mean?

Never have to get a ladder out at all.

Yeah.

If you just keep on picking that fruit.

'cause the next thing's gonna keep on coming down.

Yeah.

The next can get ripe at the same time.

And so that's where I look at it not being intimidating.

Look at it as being empowering for your business.

I, I love the car and plane analogy.

Thank you for that.

That really helps me.

Um, having driven cars and flown planes, I can attest to

both and I'm like, yeah, that ma, that makes a lot of sense.

I'm ki I, I like this idea of letting the data I. Rather than

trying to understand everything, understand the key problems

that it's telling you, and then use the data to help you

solve that particular problem.

Um, in your example, the abandoned cart, you know, if,

if, if that's going wrong, um, you can then use the

data to sort of highlight that from your experience.

Um, Jeff, I dare say haven't done this with a fair few

people, uh, around the world.

In the world of e-commerce.

What are some of the common.

Issues that you are seeing in the data, sort of some of the

common problems that keep coming up over and over again that we

could maybe think about starting with those in our own analytics.

Yeah.

Um, so we, we, our framework, the way that

we would answer that, 'cause there's, there's, there's big

problems and there's, like, we, we, we focus on five problems.

Mm-hmm.

So we, we call it the i on the journey.

It's like different, I like the letter I, so it's like, um.

You know, did it, and it's, and it, you just basically look at

a pa and we're talking about an individual page, but this,

this could be your whole site, but it starts with a page.

Like, did they get past the, the fold?

Mm-hmm.

Did they, did they scroll?

Did they get 50%?

Did they see your call to action button?

And then did they take the action you wanted them to do?

Right.

So we, we basically focus on the different areas.

Mm-hmm.

And then we see what percentage of people should

have been doing that.

Mm-hmm.

What percentage of people should get past the full,

what percentage of people should be doing that?

And it gives you a nice, clean dashboard that tells

you whether or not you're in an acceptable range.

Mm-hmm.

And then it, it automatically tells you, I. Whether that's

work, you know, whether you're in the right spot or not.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does.

So basically we tell you where the drop off is.

Mm-hmm.

It does take some configuration.

It's, it's minimal.

Um, but that will tell you, okay, here's

what your problem is.

As opposed to, um, most people don't really know what problem

they're trying to solve because they don't either, don't do

any configuration at all.

And they don't really understand like, Hey,

my bounce rate's high.

Mm-hmm.

That means that I need to fix my bounce rate.

Or I have a lot of returning visitors.

How do I get more new visitors instead of returning?

Yeah.

It's like, that's, that, that's not really a thing.

That's just like a default.

So moving beyond defaults, but not going too complicated

where you're like, say, where you're just, you know, trying

to, to create this thing that doesn't, isn't necessary.

The ultimate id, the ultimate concept here is that.

These are real people mm-hmm.

Who are trying to buy your products.

They have real problems and usually if you just

understand where they're coming from and, and their,

what they went through.

You can start to say, oh yeah, this is why a real

person didn't complete this.

Because I, I failed them on my headline.

I didn't have enough, uh, images.

The images weren't very good.

I had the highest price on the internet.

I was not competitive.

Those types of things I, I offer, I put a coupon code

in the checkout when, when I actually don't want to offer

a coupon code, and that's where they dropped off.

So ultimately you're, you're using the data to, to tell you.

What you need to pinpoint.

Mm-hmm.

And then pinpointing it, it goes back to the human element is

like, why did this human, why do these humans not do that at

the rate that I wanted them to?

Which is, uh, uh, I mean, that is just an

interesting question, isn't it?

Why, why do people not behave like they should?

Dang it, uh, if I could solve that problem with

analytics or whatever, I'd, I'd be a very wealthy man.

Um.

So the, uh, let's maybe think about some more basic questions.

Uh, basics probably the wrong word, but, um, Google

Analytics, yes or no,

Google Analytics.

Four is.

A good tool.

It's not as beautiful as the original universal

Analytics that we all loved.

Um, but I, I don't know how you could get by without having

that installed on your site.

'cause it does add really, you know, high

quality data to the mix.

And also the integration with Google is, is

as tight as it gets.

Integrating with Search console, integrating with your Google

Ads campaigns, integrating with different Google products.

There's nothing that has that tight of an integration

that can give you that data.

Yeah, that can use it to train their advertising algorithms.

That can let you do remarketing, that can

do all the segmentation.

Um, so.

It.

If you don't do it, you're missing out a lot.

Especially if you are using Google Ads as a

primary traffic driver or Google a organic search.

Yeah.

Which I mean, you're

going to be, aren't you?

Yeah.

I mean, at least for the next few years until, um,

you know, they're no longer needed because I don't know,

AI glasses do it all for you or something, you know?

But, um, it, it, it sort of, it is one of those things

I, I can get, I, I get why people are a little bit.

Twitchy about putting Google Analytics on their website.

Um, you know, especially with the Big Brother, you know,

Google's watching everything.

Uh, my general response to this is they're watching

everything anyway.

You know, it's, don't really think it's gonna make a

massive difference, but you're right, the integrations

seem to be getting better and better with Google.

Yeah.

Uh, in, in, in so many ways across their platforms.

And if you read the terms in service of

service for, uh, for Google Analytics, they do not share

data with their other products.

It's the one thing where they, where they won't, Chrome does,

like, there's other ones that, that don't tell you they don't

share data, but Google Analytics does not share the data.

Mm. They can't even access it unless you check a

box that says that they specialist can look at it.

So it's not, not shared data.

You do own that data and that the reason why is it's the

reason why they still are.

Able to run in European Union because of that.

So like, they basically had to take data privacy really

seriously on that product.

Yeah.

And then you, you actually own the data Google does

and they just store it for

you.

Yeah.

Fantastic.

So are there any other, are there any competitors to

Google Analytics that we should be thinking about?

Yeah, I mean, I, I know that a lot of

big e-commerce stores are using Adobe Analytics.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and, and if you configure it, I mean.

Just so you know, Google Analytics four, the new version

does require some configuration.

If you don't configure it at all, it, it's, it's worthless.

Mm-hmm.

There's no point in using it.

If you don't do some configuration, you can set up,

like things like custom events.

You can, you can set up e-commerce tracking necessary.

Yeah.

You can set up your key events, what we used to call

conversions, but that would be the same with Adobe.

Yeah.

Like if you're gonna put Adobe in place and you don't configure

it to, to help your store make sense, it's you're gonna.

It's just telling you clickstream data, which

clickstream data is not, not really that important.

'cause it doesn't tie to a result.

Mm-hmm.

It doesn't tie to the language you speak.

So that's one.

Um, amplitude is getting a lot of, um.

People who left GA 360, specifically the, the paid

version of Google Analytics have moved over to Amplitude.

They're just like drinking from a fire hose now because

a lot of e advanced e-commerce stores did want to have, uh,

they, they're not gonna just ride with Google 'cause the

initial release just didn't have everything they needed.

Mm-hmm.

So those are the two that are taking a lot of market

share away from, from Google.

Well,

you've kind of alluded to my next

question in many ways.

What is it that they offer then that Google's not offering?

Yeah, I. One can a, a clear product roadmap.

Mm-hmm.

And a clear customer segment.

They're going after.

I've been teaching Google Analytics in a classroom

since 2010, and even back then I said Google Analytics.

It's the same Google Analytics, whether you're doing it for

your 10 person cat video blog, or you're doing it for

the biggest e-commerce site in the web, in the internet.

Right.

It's the same Google Analytics when you install it, like

it's the exact same product.

Mm-hmm.

And then it's all about your configuration.

Now, if you did something that was more aligned with.

An e-commerce specific tool.

Mm-hmm.

You already have a market that, that understands your language.

Right.

So that, that's, that's the main advantage to it, is that

these are these specialty tools.

They are geared towards your outcome.

Mm-hmm.

Versus every outcome for everybody on the internet.

And so Google will never be able to compete in that same

way as a specialty tool can.

Um, yeah.

But also.

That integration and that tightness with, with other

Google products, it's like, maybe make it one B then

maybe it's not your mm-hmm.

One A system, but it could be your one B 'cause how

are you gonna find that?

Otherwise, that's really cool.

Uh, and, and did you mentioned, um, you've

seen larger companies use these.

Is there a certain if, well, for example, if I'm, if I've

recently started my econ business and I'm turning over,

I don't know, 50, a hundred grand in the year, not, not

massive amounts of money.

Do I look at Adobe?

Do I look at Amplitude?

Or is there like a, is there a cost That's a big

barrier to entry here that I need to be aware of.

I love it.

This is, this is right in my, this is my jam right

here, just talking about this type of geeky stuff.

So generally speaking, um, you know, companies like

an e-commerce company.

They probably spend to marketing advertising

maybe 20% of their budget.

Mm-hmm.

I, I don't really know you, you know that better than me,

but let's just say they spend 20%, most companies spend

between one and 2% on their analytics tools and the team.

Mm-hmm.

And so if you're a hundred million dollars store,

you'd be putting a million to 2 million into that.

You would definitely have the capacity to pay a

hundred thousand dollars for Google Analytics for 360,

that version, or the Adobe Analytics, and you'd have

money left over to train your team and to get things going.

Mm-hmm.

If you're a million dollar store.

You're talking about maybe $10,000 for that.

Mm-hmm.

That's where you hire a consultant to tag your

site, to do it one time and to build you a dashboard.

Mm-hmm.

That's pretty much all you can afford at that rate.

And so it really comes down to where you're at.

Um, Avinash Kashic, who's a guy that I, I.

Followed as I was learning.

Um, Occam's razors, his blog, he called it the 10 90 Rule.

Mm-hmm.

10% goes to the people or to the tools, 90% to the brains.

And so at a hundred thousand dollars for your analytics tool,

that would mean that you need to add that million dollar budget.

That means that you're in the a hundred million range.

So most of these tools that the paid ones are priced towards 50

plus million dollar entities.

Yeah.

And so that, and ultimately you can sort of self

sortt based on that.

Um, and, and I've, I've actually worked with companies that do.

A hundred million plus in revenue and they still

don't wanna pay Google for their paid tool.

They get by on the free one.

Um, um, and then that's just, that's just where they,

they maybe they think that money should go elsewhere.

Maybe they look at it as an expense where they could put

that money into media, which is working for them, or they don't

wanna pay for a configuration.

But that's, you can self sort based on just the tool price and

then that one to 2% of revenue being your entire function for

analytics.

And so if I am, if I'm starting out then, uh, or I'm, you know,

got a smaller site, uh, that's turning over, I don't know,

half a million bucks, um, at, at this point to configure

analytics well, and to give me the data that I need.

I, I guess I can either learn it myself, you know,

cue YouTube or cue the courses that you guys do.

Um.

Or I can go find a consultant maybe to help me set this up.

Right.

Um, have I understood that correctly?

Yeah, those are pretty much your options.

Do it yourself.

I. With a combination of self-education and you doing

the work or get a consultant that's probably in the Upwork

category for somebody who's doing half a million a year.

Mm-hmm.

You're probably not even, you're probably going to

Upwork and finding somebody to really do it as a one-off,

doing it as the install, the technical piece of it.

You're not even really able to afford an analyst at that point.

You're sort of your own analyst, but you're, you're

just getting somebody to get you the, you know, to cut down

on the learning curve on time.

Yeah.

Um, when you're a million plus, I think you might start

looking at, at a, a true analyst or somebody who's

giving you recommendations.

That person usually pays for themselves because they're,

they're telling you the pockets where you have revenue

missed opportunities and stuff like that, where your ad

spend can be more effective.

I. Um, and then, you know, like that we, we do exist

for a reason and we do have customers for a reason.

And that's because there's stores, I mean, there's

a lot of people who wanna self-educate, right?

And the, and what they, what the value we have at Measure

U is we have the courses, we have unlimited support.

Mm-hmm.

We have mentors, people, we have dozens of mentors who have gone

through our materials, who have been doing this for five, 10

years and they're ready to help.

And so you sort of pay for that community that, that

will support you doing these things on your own.

Um.

And so that's, that's really where we fit

into the puzzle as well.

And is there, um, is AI getting better at

helping you here analyze this stuff on a regular basis?

Or is AI not quite there yet?

It's so funny, like, really like when do

you release this episode is sort of the answer, right?

Because it's like, as of, as of the time we're recording

this, I would say that AI is.

The integration's not quite there, but I mean, Google

Gemini is my favorite AI engine.

Mm-hmm.

I think it's, I think it's the dark horse and I think

it's gonna win, um, to a certain extent because of

its integration with Google Suite and stuff like that.

Yeah.

Once that gets plugged into the Google Analytics, and they

can do that, that level of, of ANA analysis, it's like

game over for, for some of the old way of doing things.

Mm-hmm.

Um, it's only, it's inevitable like it will happen.

I don't know when, um, it could be that it's already

out there, you know?

Um, but the reality is that.

AI as long as it has access to the data set.

Mm-hmm.

And as long as it understands the data, it will be really

good at finding trends and patterns out of it and

giving recommendations.

And so that's that, you know, with it, I think a year from

now that that'll be pretty much guaranteed to happen.

Mm-hmm.

I'm actually quite surprised that it hasn't happened already.

Um, I think a lot of it has to do with just the.

I don't, I don't wanna get into a technical explanation, but it

has to do with excess, excess of the a of the APIs that mm-hmm.

Pull the data in.

And then just, just integration among teams and

then just the extensibility of, of these models.

Um, but I, I think that Google having what I think

is gonna be the winning.

Large language model mm-hmm.

In Gemini, and then the best integration, you already see

it integrating into G Suite.

It's gonna happen, um, relatively soon.

I can only imagine into Google Analytics and into the

entire advertising product.

And they're doing it already.

It's just that, it's not like you can't, you can't, like,

it's not your assistant.

It's more of like, it's, it's their assistant.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I mean, I mean, I, I logged into my, I don't

normally log into Gmail.

I have a Google Mail account, but I normally have a, a, um,

just have it on the computer.

Um, and then when I logged into it for whatever reason

the other day, uh, and I saw Gemini was there, I was

quite excited because I know you can switch it off, but

I, I was very much like.

Gemini, this is the email that I'm looking for.

Yeah.

Can you please find it?

And yeah, Gemini goes away and goes, of course I can.

Here it is.

And you're like, holy cow.

Um, this is quite an extraordinary new feature

that, um, you now see on the G Suite with the docs

and the spreadsheets and all that sort of stuff.

And so I. Um, I, I'd like you, I think it's a bit of a dark

horse, but the fact it is so well integrated in Google Yeah.

Uh, is the most extraordinary thing.

And so yeah.

Whe when it comes out, who knows whether you'll be able to do

this, uh, on your analytics.

Um, I. But I am, I, I mean, I know that I can, I, I've

done it before with large data sets as I've just given

it to chat, GPT and gone.

Tell me what you think.

Um, I, I tend to be a little bit more creative, I suppose,

in my prompt engineering.

Uh, but in essence that's what you're asking for, isn't it?

And it, and it can help you, um, analyze data.

I guess the thing that I'm thinking of here, Jeff, is as

a very good friend of mine.

Um, Chris Ivers, who's a beautiful lady.

Uh, I've just, actually, I need to, I need to get, lemme just

make a note, contact Chris.

I've not spoke to her for a while.

Um, anyway, she has this great phrase that you, you don't

know what you don't know.

Mm-hmm.

And I think sometimes with data and with

ai, it can be a little bit like that if you kind of have

a clue or an inkling, it can help you figure stuff out.

But if you don't know, um.

What you don't know.

It's hard to look at the, it is hard to get that information

out, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

I think you've gotta have a sort of, an interesting starting

point along the right track.

Um, and I guess it'll be, that'll be the interesting

thing when you, when AI in effect becomes.

Your permanent data analyst, you know?

Um, and that can tell you what you don't know.

Yeah.

I've I've not seen that yet.

It's getting there for actually, so just to comment

on that, we've, we've been in, in Gemini, we've been basically

not taking the first response.

Mm-hmm.

Like we, we, like, they'll give us response.

I'm like, that's a seven outta 10, but did you consider this?

And then can you make this a nine outta 10?

And then they'll redo it and it'll be better.

And I'm like, okay, that's a nine outta 10.

We, we still have the missing this thing.

Can you make it a 10 outta 10 and they'll fix it?

And so you can train this thing to just keep on getting better.

Mm-hmm.

And just keep on challenging it and it will self-heal

and self-improve.

And so, I mean that, that, that's, you could

do that with analysis too.

The question is, how big of a pain in the butt is

it to get the data out?

That's really the problem, is like, you have to get

to download it into a flat file and then do this.

Mm-hmm.

And then get another file.

That, that's the challenge I think right now is just that

it's, it's actually getting it.

The then what you need to feed it in there.

Um, but that again, that that'll be solved relatively quickly.

Yeah.

And so then never say, yeah, like, we don't

know what we don't know.

And then also, like, I would never answer a question

about whether AI can do something with the word never.

It's just when it's, it's when, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But especially at the moment, you know, the,

the, the race is piddling ahead very quick, isn't it?

Um, now this is all very fascinating and I'm, I'm kind

of curious, you know, we've.

With your course.

So let's say I, I do a half a million a year, I think.

Well, I'm, I'm gonna go do Jeff's course.

I'm gonna figure the whole analytics thing out.

Um, I dunno if you've got any ironic, uh, data around

this, but I tend to find, and this may be a personal thing,

Jeff, uh, where I might go and do that, or I might ask

one of the team members to do something like that course,

and they go through it, they get it, they understand it.

So we start off strong, right?

As in, oh, we found this, this, and this.

Let's go fix that.

But six months later, everybody's forgotten about

everything because there's just the normal run of

day-to-day life, um, going on.

So how important is it for me as an e-commerce entrepreneur to

think about having someone maybe dedicated just to data analysis?

Yeah, I mean everything you gotta look

at it is like, can you get an ROI from that?

So say that you have half a million dollar

store, you have limited resources, you get mm-hmm.

Two or three, pick yours.

Right.

Would that be one of the two or three?

Yeah.

Would it be one of the two or three people that you end

up choosing to, to put there?

Uh, probably not because I'd rather have somebody

running the ads.

Yeah.

I'd probably have somebody managing inventory.

Mm-hmm.

Um, sourcing product.

There's, there's way more things to do.

Right.

And that might be you wearing all those hats, right?

Mm-hmm.

You might get that point.

Usually it's when you get to that.

Ten-ish people.

Mm-hmm.

Like when you have two people in marketing, the third one

should be an analyst, I think.

Yeah.

Um, or you, there's more, there's more value in analyzing

inventory, analyzing product choices and stuff like that.

But at some point.

Literally it'll pay for itself 10 times over by

not wasting money on ads.

Mm-hmm.

By not wasting money on traffic, however you generate

it, that just isn't efficient.

That goes away.

Having an eye on the site and that customer experience

and tying it all together, eventually you lose money by

not doing it versus gaining.

So, um, a lot of like.

I've been in this industry for long enough that it's

treated as an expense center for most companies.

Mm-hmm.

But those who treat it as a profit center and can see

the light are the ones who are at the cutting edge.

Yep.

They're the ones who are compounding the value of doing

this, and they're the ones who are growing versus the people

who are like, I don't see the value in investing in that.

Or it, you know, it's not worth it.

They end up just staying in the same spot because they

don't have the data in order to tell them how to improve.

They can't see the patterns because they're

not addressing it.

So it's not an expense center, it's a profit center

when yielded properly.

But at some, I mean, if you're too young, too early in this

thing, it's just an expense.

Yeah.

But if you invested in, in our courses, learned our framework,

implemented it, and then had somebody who, and you loved

it and you made it part of what you're doing, that'll

be a reason why you double your revenue year over year.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, fair comment.

Fair comment.

I, I, I do find, um.

With a lot of these things, the, the more I try and do,

the less I seem to get done.

Um, and so I'm, I'm very aware that, that finding

people to help me is, is a, is a beautiful thing.

Whether that's agencies, whether that's consultants, whether

that's people on network or Fiverr, whether that's part-time

staff, whatever it is, I, um, if it, I've found that the

more it's reliant on me that.

The less likely it is to happen Yeah.

In the long run, you know?

And that's, that's challenging for the, especially

for the owner of the business.

Like you DIYed yourself into the business.

Like you had to figure out all these things out.

Mm-hmm.

At some point you can't learn anymore.

Um, so we do offer do it yourself.

Like just buy a course, learn it, go implement it.

Then we have done with you, that's the majority of our

customers where they're in a community, they're asking

questions and that's, that's more geared towards the

freelancer slash agencies that you work with and the employees.

Not to the business owner.

And then we also do done for you services, which is where the,

the owner wants the result and they're like, I just wanna pay

for the result from experts.

That's, that's our done for, for you service.

Where, where you can get to that point.

At no point.

Really is, would I recommend that the business owner

themselves get heavily into the technical pieces of analytics

because, um, they have other things to solve usually, and if

you can allocate money towards it, that that's something

where, where there, there's people who will excel at that.

Very rarely does somebody start a e-commerce store

and then want to become the master at analytics.

Uh, y Well, yeah, I, to be fair,

I've met a few of them.

Um, but yeah, on the whole, I I would, I would tend to agree.

I'm, it's, it's an interesting one, isn't it?

The, the who does it in the organization.

Um, and I think actually quite rightly, given it the

do and the importance, um.

That, that, that, that you have especially 'cause

like you said, there's so many options you can learn.

Yeah.

You can do the done with you and you can do the done for you.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, you can be a leader.

You can say that data's important.

You can say these things are there, but you're not

gonna be going and figuring out how to configure it and

like researching how to get JavaScript on your site or what

tag management solution to use.

Ultimately, you're gonna just champion that this

is important to us, that we want this versus not.

We wanna see answers, we wanna see it clearly, and

this is important to us.

Go figure it out.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No fair play.

Fair play.

How important is it?

And, and I've heard, and I appreciate just hearing

the question in my head.

It sounds a little bit silly, but I have heard both sides of

the, the, the argument here.

I'm curious to see where you sit.

How important is air AB testing?

So we, that's funny 'cause we.

Are now pioneering what we teach as the anti AB testing.

And, and I'll be qualified for a second, but, um, no,

let's just leave it there.

Yeah.

No, sorry, go.

Yeah, no, no.

Actually you can just leave it there.

But, um, AB testing is a, is this whole I idea that.

It comes down to just one subject line

versus the other one.

Image versus the other button.

Color yellow versus orange.

Mm-hmm.

And ultimately that is, that only works if you

have so much traffic and so many people coming in that

you can see statistical significance in doing that.

Mm-hmm.

Versus I mentioned the eyes and the journey, the different,

the five different points where you can lose somebody.

Mm-hmm.

On a page.

If you just look at that and you say, okay, normally we lose.

30% of people after the headline are above the fold and

you're at, you're losing 60%.

What will happen is that'll tell you, this is

where you need to focus.

If you can't fix this thing, nothing else matters.

This is the biggest leak in the funnel.

Then all you need to do is go fix that thing.

Now, one way you can fix that is through an AB test.

Yeah.

Another way to do it is if it's at 60% and you know it's

failing, is to do a complete.

Overhaul.

You don't need to test the old crappy one that's not working.

Yeah.

You, you know exactly where your problem is.

Hmm.

So would you ab, if you have like a funnel, like in real

life, if you have a funnel and oil's just spitting all

over the place, you know, would you ab test whether you

should plug that hole or not?

Or would you just plug the hole?

I think AB testing is something that buys people time.

Yeah.

And it makes them feel smart.

But ultimately the reality is it only is reserved

for traffic, high traffic sites that get that.

You know, if you're Best Buy or Google, you can AB test and you

can actually have significant weight in a couple days.

If you're a small store, you should just plug that hole

and figure out how to, and figure out the fastest way to

plug that hole so you can keep on going live another day.

That's a really interesting, uh, observation.

Um, I, I, I, with AB testing, I, I think I get the point

that actually you have to have data to make data, to have a

data significance, don't you?

To, to actually find stuff of meaning.

Um, so if you've only got four people coming to your

website, I dunno, it's, well, how are you gonna measure it?

Right?

Um, so no, I, I totally get that and I, I. I've not heard

the argument before that AB testing buys you, buys you time,

which I actually really like.

It's almost like a procrastinator's dream

because I don't have to make a decision right now.

I can put it off and test it against this

other thing over here.

I'm smart.

Put on my lab coat.

I'm smart.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Smart procrastination.

I, I, I, I've not heard that argument before, so I'm, I'm

gonna remember that one Jeff.

Um.

Right.

This is a stage of the, the show where I, uh, ask

you for a question for me, Jeff, while I remember.

Yeah.

So this is one, you might have heard this before,

um, but is there an op, is there a trend that you, that you

didn't act on that you regret?

In the world of eCommerce, is there something

that you was like, man,

I

wish I would've done that.

Oh yes.

How long we got anyway?

Uh, I'm not gonna answer that now.

I'm gonna get into that on my social media.

Come follow me on LinkedIn at Edmonton.

Uh, and I will be answering that question there along

with all the other questions I get asked on this show.

But that was a really good question.

Um, uh, self-reflection.

Now we could even talk about regret, uh,

and is it worthwhile?

But I'm not a psychologist, so probably should avoid that.

Um, um, but no, I love that question.

Jeff.

If people wanna find out more about the stuff that you are

doing, um, you know, maybe about the course, maybe about

the done with you service or the done for you service,

where's the best place to go?

Yeah, so I'd love you to go to measureu.com,

the word measure, and then 'u' a the end .com.

You can see it in my shirt as well.

If you're watching this on video.

And we have a free community, and that free community

is, it's packed with resources we have mm-hmm.

Uh, tools that you can use for the e-commerce calculators.

How much money should I spend with my ads?

How much should I spend with our, how, how do I

set up Google Analytics?

How do I tag my site and stuff like that.

Lots of free resources.

Plus workshops, tons of workshops you can use in order

to do, um, there, there are 10, 10 to 20 minute videos that

tell you to do a single task.

How do you do this thing?

And that's our free community.

We have a little, we have a, a student lounge in there too.

Thousands of people are in there asking questions

about the different platforms around analytics.

So our free community has more value than

most paid communities.

I can promise you that.

And um, and then if you like that.

You'll get on our mailing list and then we'll talk to you

about what other offers we have.

You can buy individual courses.

You can get all of our courses for one lifetime fee, which

a lot of people don't do, but you, you know, we have, um,

dozens and dozens of courses that you can get for one charge.

We also have coaching.

We.

Um, through our accelerator program where we'll, we'll

actually, um, multiple times a week, about 200 times a year,

you can jump on with a live call with one of our mentor

experts and instructors to get your question answered.

And then, um, we do the done for you service as well.

That's not for everybody, not for most, but if you really

just want this thing done from the people who invented the

frameworks and who know how to do this thing, that's where

we can help you out as well.

And so that's a little bit of your background of, of

how you can take advantage of what we do at Measure U.

Fantastic.

And that's measureu.com.

Uh, U as in, I assume it stands for university?

Yes.

Uh, or unguarded, maybe.

Uh, unappreciated.

I don't know.

I'm just wax lyrical about, but it is a, it,

it, it reminds me of, um.

I dunno why Jeff?

It reminds me of the movie my kids watched when they were

younger, the Monsters Inc. Okay.

Didn't they have Monster U um, as a sort of, this is the

University of Monsters and I thought, okay, it's brilliant.

Uh, so Measure U we would of course link to

that in the show notes.

Um, are you on LinkedIn?

Do you do that whole thing or is it just on the website?

Yep.

LinkedIn, uh, linkedin.com/jeffsauer

in/jeffsauer.

You can check me out on there.

Um, we're trying to get more active and, and putting

stuff outta the community onto our social channels.

By the time you watch this, hopefully we'll have some

cool videos and clips on there, but we are producing

content all the time.

We, we love this stuff.

Mm-hmm.

We've been doing it for, for a long time.

Um, and yeah, we always are just talking about the new

trends and what's happening, um, with, with your tools and,

and how to get the most of it.

And then how to think about measurement in general.

Mm.

Fantastic.

Well, we'll link to that as well in the show notes,

which you can get along, uh, with the transcript and the

show notes for free on the website ecommercepodcast.net.

Of course, if you are on an app listening to this, as I know

99.95% of you are looking at the data that we have, Jeff,

everyone's listening to this show on a phone either with

Apple Podcast or Spotify.

It seems to be the way it works.

Um, and so the links will be of course, in the show notes

on the app as well, which you can get us by scrolling down,

which is a beautiful thing.

Uh, Jeff, listen, uh, great to meet you, man.

Really excited about what you guys are doing.

I. Thanks for coming on the show and clearing up a

few things, a few questions that I had in my head.

Um, but uh, genuinely lovely to meet you.

Thanks so much.

Yeah, Matt, this is great.

Thanks so much for having me.

No worries.

Listen, we have to do that huge round of applause thing.

Yes.

There we go.

Yeah.

There we go.

Uh, not too much, but that, that was enough.

Brilliant.

That's fantastic.

Well, huge thanks again to Jeff for joining me today.

Now, be follow, uh, short for be follow.

No, no.

Just be sure to follow, uh, the e-commerce podcast

where you get your, wherever you get your podcast from

because we've got some more great conversations lined up.

And of course, I don't want you to miss any of them.

And in case no one has told you yet.

Day, let me be the first.

You are awesome.

Yes, you are created.

Awesome.

It's just a burden you have to bear.

Jeff's gotta bear it.

I've gotta bear it.

You've gotta bear it as well.

Now the E-Commerce podcast is produced by Podjunction

you can find our entire archive of episodes on

your favorite podcast app.

The theme song was written by Josh Edmundson, and as

I mentioned the show notes, the access to the newsletter

and all that sort of stuff is available on our website.

eCommerce podcast.net.

But that is it from me.

That is it from Jeff.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world.

I will see you next time.

Bye for now.