In this episode of the Ecommerce Podcast, host Matt Edmundson chats with Tanner Holt from Mach 7 Marketing about growth-driven design and its impact on online businesses. Tanner shares insights on microtesting, minimum viable concepts, and the importance of understanding buyer psychology in e-commerce. The conversation also touches on the role of AI in marketing and optimization strategies for businesses of all sizes.

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Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

5:25 Growth driven design explained

12:26 Testing ads before website design

18:39 Microtesting for product development

24:18 Minimum viable funnel components

30:46 When to start split testing

36:16 AI's impact on optimization

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Key Takeaways:

1. Start with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP):

Tanner emphasises the importance of beginning with a basic version of your website and iterating based on user feedback. He states, "You're starting with a minimum viable product. So you still have a little bit of a strategy but you're starting with your base pages. You know, you don't need some fancy calculator on your website right at the beginning."

2. Utilise Microtesting with Ads:

Tanner suggests using ads to test concepts before fully implementing them on your site. He explains, "The first thing I test is, hey, am I following? Am I solving a problem that people actually need?"

3. Focus on Buyer Psychology:

Understanding the psychological aspects of your customers is crucial. Tanner advises, "Focusing on the root of the problem, identity, and buyer psychology. If you can master that, you'll be good at anything."

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Tanner Holt [0:00 - 0:00]: Foreign.

Tanner Holt [2:38 - 2:40]: We're doing great, Matt. Thanks for having me.

Matt Edmundson [2:40 - 2:44]: It's great that you're here, man. Great that you're here. Now, whereabouts are you in the world?

Tanner Holt [2:45 - 2:49]: Yeah, I'm based in the US in the state of. The lovely state of Utah.

Matt Edmundson [2:50 - 2:53]: One of the few states in America that I've not been to.

Tanner Holt [2:54 - 2:57]: That's. That's a shame. It's got to be at the top of your next list.

Matt Edmundson [2:57 - 3:01]: I really do want to go to Utah. I. It's. Apparently it's beautiful.

Tanner Holt [3:02 - 3:10]: It is. You got the nice slopes coming up for this winter and then in the summer you got the good national parks. So. Yeah, for every season.

Matt Edmundson [3:10 - 3:14]: Everything for every season. Is that the tagline? Because if it's not, it totally should be.

Tanner Holt [3:14 - 3:20]: It should be. The tourism department now and tell them.

Matt Edmundson [3:21 - 3:41]: You should register the domain, everything for every season and just trademark it, patent it, do whatever you need to do. But I think that's quite cool. Well, listen, man, thanks for joining us. Let's jump straight into it. What is growth driven design? This is a phrase I see on your website. I know that you've spoken to the team about it here. What is it? Let's start there.

Tanner Holt [3:41 - 4:34]: Yeah, so it's a new approach to traditional web design. So let's kind of go over what traditional web design first is before we get into growth driven web design. You know, traditional website design for someone is nowadays. You know, back in the day, you usually had to find an agency or you do it yourself and you say, hey, agency, I want a new website. You pay them a lot of money, you wait three months and then they launch it and they try and make this perfect product and you're usually unhappy with it. And most people expect it to launch with tonnes of traffic and, you know, tonnes of sales. And that doesn't happen. Yeah. Then have to add the marketing piece. Right. Growth driven design is a little bit different. Instead of having this three months, let's look at it like a staircase, right? You kind of have your first three months where you're really doing nothing. You launch, you get a little bit of traffic and then most people wait, you know, maybe a year or two and then they'll do that same process over and over.

Matt Edmundson [4:34 - 4:35]: Yeah, yeah.

Tanner Holt [4:35 - 5:11]: This big long staircase. With growth driven design, we're actually testing and using data. You're starting with a minimum viable product. So you still have a little bit of a strategy but you're starting with your base pages. You know, you don't need some fancy calculator on your website right at the beginning. Add that if your users want it. And that's the whole point of testing. Why build something if they aren't going to use it? The last thing you want to do is build some resource that's going to cost you two, $3,000 that no one wants. And that's the difference with growth driven web design is you start with that minimum viable product and you a b test and add things as you go.

Matt Edmundson [5:12 - 5:21]: So that's, that's a really interesting. And I've actually heard this phrase before, this growth driven phrase and I'm trying to, as you're talking, it sounds familiar a little bit. I'm trying to rack my brain.

Tanner Holt [5:21 - 5:25]: Probably HubSpot. HubSpot is a big founder. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson [5:25 - 6:16]: Yes. This is where I knew I'd heard something similar and where in effect I love this strategy. You start off with a minimum viable product. You, you build something quick. It does not have to be perfect. You launch it and you see what goes on and you test and you build on the basis of data and where it's all going. Which on one hand it sounds wonderful, right? But on the other hand, I guess my question is, are we too used to doing it the other way? Right? Are we too used to sort of. Because let's face it, we all get emotionally involved, don't we, in, in what we're building and the way things look. I mean it, it, it, how easy is it to do? I guess would be a good question here.

Tanner Holt [6:16 - 6:28]: You know, it used to be a lot easier. We always hear, hey, Google's making AdWords and that's supposed to simplify business owners lives. But if you look at it, companies have like 10 people just to manage one AdWord account, right? You want to make it simpler?

Matt Edmundson [6:29 - 6:29]: Tell me about it.

Tanner Holt [6:29 - 7:56]: Harder, right? So it is a little bit harder than it used to be. You know, a few years ago I think. Oh, has it been two years already? Probably about two years that they had Google optimised where you go and you can a b test your website for free. The problem with testing now is it is a pay to play game. You generally have to have some really nice software and for starting out, that generally doesn't make sense. You have to kind of take a stab in the dark with your minimum viable product. But what a lot of people don't do is they don't follow those Metrics. If I were to go back and say, like the biggest mistake that I see new people, I do a lot of freelancing work on Fiverr. So I get a lot of these new people that are so excited wanting to launch, you know, that perfect. They're emotionally attached but they don't know what metrics to watch and they'll just say, oh, I didn't get sales this week. And then they go change everything. And they'll change 10 things. Well, what things made that increase or what made that decrease? The majority of people starting out don't even have the right. You know, they're like, I just had 50 people go to my website and I didn't get a sale. When we know most sites generally overall convert at 2 to 3%. So if they're not at least 100 visitors, it's hard to tell that. So metric is, are a really big thing at the beginning. But to start out, a lot of people could do what I like to call, and this is kind of where I've developed my own philosophy is microtesting at that app level. Do your testing on the ads and implement it to your site a little bit later. So that's how you can say your small dogs can compete with those big dogs like Netflix and Amazon.

Matt Edmundson [7:56 - 8:13]: So how do you. I mean, I've heard this idea before. I don't think I've heard it called microtesting. But this idea you're testing with the ads, just explain to us your process a little bit tanner on how you do that. What do you mean when you say do micro testing with your ads?

Tanner Holt [8:13 - 9:49]: Yeah, so I start, I like to do with colour block and the first thing I test is, hey, am I following? Am I solving a problem that people actually need? And I'll just take. It'll be, you know, usually 10 words of text and it'll say true or false at the top. And it might be true or false. You know, I've spent all of my ad budget and my website isn't performing and if people click that, I know that's a pain point. And then the next test I'll kind of line it up and I just do it to 400 impressions, nothing big. Each test maybe is only $25. Again, we're not looking at statistical significance, but you know, statistical significance would be maybe hundreds of dollars. Yeah, but we're getting a good stab in the dark within 24 to 48 hours. Enough to say, okay, here's my problems. I generally want a 1% click through rate and I Want that click to be under 50 cents to just validate. And I call it a minimum viable concept. And I might get four or five, but I'm going to take that best one and I know this is the biggest problem or the biggest desired state, then I'll make headlines for it. And after I do the headlines, I'll do the offer. That was my biggest mistake starting out is I had my offer. Hey, let's do a video audit. Everyone on Fiverr is buying it. No, I wasted so much time when people just wanted a checklist. If I would have validated that there was a checklist, I would have saved myself hours of free audits. If I validated that one thing. You kind of validate and you get people to your website and you make changes as you go. Again, it's. You're using that scientific process. Is it statistically significant? No, but it gets you a lot quicker where you, where you want to be.