In this transformative episode, Philippa Gamse, Owner of Websites That Win International, shares strategies to optimize your website’s performance through analytics. If you struggle with unclear website goals or wasted marketing spend, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What notional values reveal about your marketing tactics’ true impact
– Why benchmarking against competitors can mislead your website strategy
– How to set clear, actionable goals for your website’s customer journey
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the start, scale and succeed. Podcast, the only podcast that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey as a founder and today’s guest is Philippa Gamse, and she’s here to talk to us about three what I found are very clever rules that you’ve probably never heard of and they’re quite important, because these three rules, along with a couple others, will determine whether your website is a winner or not. Philippa has clocked over 25 years in digital marketing strategy and analytics and consulted with nearly 500 clients during that time span, and worked with websites that have cumulatively generated hundreds of millions of dollars. Owners and marketing executives hire her to find hidden insights in their web analytics that will grow their business and cut wasted spending, because many are missing those hidden gems. She’s helped clients in New Jersey, in North America, in Europe, in the Middle East to translate the numbers into transformational ideas that move the business forward, reveal opportunities for new markets, products and services and maximize the return on their investment. Philippa is also the author of 42 rules for a website that wins, which was endorsed by none other than Guy Kawasaki, and has taught at three international business schools. She’s here with us today, Philippa, I’m so excited to have you on the show. It’s been a minute and coming, but we finally got you here, and you’ve got these 42 rules for websites that win. And as I was reading through the book, there are three that really jumped out as as like instantly true, but wildly under appreciated. And so I want to dive into a couple of these. Now. There are 42 of them. We’re not going to hit all 42 but there’s a few here that I think are really powerful. So the first one is, uh, is something that I think is the opposite of what most people have heard is rule number four for your book is beware of benchmarking and best practices. So why do we need to be aware of benchmarking and best practices?
Philippa Gamse
Hi, good morning, Scott. It’s great to be on the show. Yeah, it’s interesting. A lot of people say, Well, how do people in my industry, typically, you know, succeed or what’s the average number of visitors, open rate, conversion rate, whatever. And I’m always a bit wary of comparing your business online with others in the space, not to say it’s never worth it. But the thing is, let’s say that you’re doing much better than other competitors. I mean, the problem is, you don’t know what the other competitors are doing, or you don’t necessarily know how good their marketing is, how their efforts compare to yours, how much resources they’re spending. So if you’re doing particularly well, that’s great, but what you don’t want to do is say, Oh, we’re doing great, so we don’t have to worry so much. And equally, if you’re not doing so well against them, you don’t want sort of panic. And I mean, yes, you want to do better. But the question is, how are you doing against your own goals, your own targets? And I mean, I think the industry benchmarks, okay, you can take a look at them. I mean, another question is how good the data is? Because, of course, a lot of the information that goes into things like conversion rates and revenue and so on, directly attributable to the website is pretty confidential. So you know, yes, by all means, take a look at them. But what I’m usually much more interested in is, let’s set our goals and our targets and then benchmark ourselves against, you know, our original measurements and where we are a month from now, three months from now and so on.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that, because I like, I just find, like, you’re saying, I’ve worked with so many companies and their data on their conversion rates, number one, are all measured slightly differently, right? So, like, what’s what is the numerator? What’s the denominator? Like, is it when they sign up for a free trial? Is it when they actually pay something? Is it when they buy millions of dollars of stuff or make a $1 transaction? So even inside of an industry, there’s very, very big differences, and a lot of them don’t measure it very well, even if it is defined the same, right? And so it’s like, how that data validity points a really big one. And, and, and I love that. It’s not just don’t do this, right, but it is do do this, and using the website and saying, Hey, what are our goals? What do we need it to do? Is so important, because who cares what your conversion rate is if it doesn’t actually move you to your goal as a company? So so much wisdom in that it begs the question, yeah.
Philippa Gamse
So, I was just gonna say I I’m honestly amazed at the number of business owners or decision makers that i. Meet who can’t articulate those goals to me when we first start talking. And I just, I just wanted to exactly.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yes, is exactly what’s gonna go next, because there’s this, there’s this, like part of our brain, right? That is the part that, this is not scientifically accurate. There’s a part of our brain that is responsible for setting website goals, right? And for a lot of CEOs and business owners, they use all kinds of other parts, but it’s the connections are just missing. And so you talk to them about your goal for this, your goal for that, and they’re on it, and they’ve got metrics, and they understand it and and they’re driving it, and it’s awesome. And then you say, Well, what’s, what role does your website play in that? And then it’s like crickets, you know, it’s just there’s no idea. So thinking through, and I’ve just bumped into this a lot recently, so there’s no reason to pick this specific criteria, other than I’ve just bumped into it a lot. But there are lots of folks who create successful businesses, millions, hundreds of millions of dollars a year, but they largely do it offline. Sure they have a website, but and maybe people look at that website, but they don’t produce through that website, right, or at least not intentionally, and they realize, hey, at this stage, we want to have a better online presence. People are making decisions that way, and, and, and we want to be able to take advantage of a website. We want our website to actually help us win, as opposed to just being there. So how do you help them figure out what those appropriate goals should be?
Philippa Gamse
So the thing is, I mean, maybe even if you don’t start out with specific targets, but what you need to do with your site is to be aware of all the things that you want it to do, and everybody focuses on the obvious one, which is sales and revenue, direct revenue coming in, okay, but very few people buy from a website on their first visit, you know? And so it’s interesting that when we look at website performance, a lot of people will focus a lot on acquisition costs. You know, how much does it cost me to get traffic to the site? And then they’ll look at the end result, you know, how many people have actually spent some money, but they miss the whole big space in the middle, you know, we talk about the customer journey, right, right, which is kind of the behavior engagement piece where people have said, Okay, I found you, and I’m thinking about doing business with you, but I haven’t decided yet, and now I’m looking at your website to find out more about what you do and to make important decisions, like, do I trust this business that I’ve just found? How do you create that that online trust with them, and so really being aware of especially that big piece in the middle that most so many businesses ignore. So for example, I’ve got video on my website, which is really important, because video is a really good way of marketing, and it really gives people a feel for your business, or who they might meet in your business. I mean, it’s still a people selling. Is still a people thing, right? Relationship thing. And so how many people watch those videos? How many people watch those videos beyond the first 510, seconds? Because you’d be amazed, how many people fall off watching a video, right? So looking at all the elements on your site and how they work together and how they work individually, and how you relate not only to your major goals, which are obviously to sell something usually or to get a lead, but how do they relate to the goals that you have that take them along that process, like maybe signing up for a newsletter or a free trial or after sales. Let’s not forget the after sales, right? Joining your your frequent buyer club, if you have one, something like that, right? So, so being aware of all the points on your site where you want something to happen, and figuring out if it is happening and if it is, then you can say, is it happening at a rate that feels reasonable to us, right? And obviously smaller goals will have a higher conversion rate than than larger ones, you know. But even that piece, you know, we just said, it’s amazing how many people can’t articulate this. But even that piece, like, where are all the calls to action on your website? Do you know exactly what you want people to do on every page of the site, right? And the answer is often no.
Scott Ritzheimer
It’s so true. It’s so true. I love that. And you know, for some folks, it’s not like we don’t even know what should feel good or not feel good. Okay, right? If you’re if you’re not sure, then pick one and try to improve it. And if you move the needle on it, great. If you don’t move the needle on it, then you can sit down say, Hey, do we still really want to try this? Or do we want to move on to something and see if there’s some low hanging fruit there? So I think we were so used to operating or trying to get to clarity that we’ve lost our taller. For mystery to some extent, and I think it hurts us in in a place like this, I want to jump to rule number nine, so do the math before you do the deal. And and this just ties into a lot of what we’ve talked about so far. But when we’re doing the math, one of the challenges are you sit down with a marketing agency and they just start rattling off like this and likes and that, and the other and the other. And it’s like, I don’t even know what math to do. So what’s the math that we want to do, and why is it important that we do it ahead of the deal.
Philippa Gamse
Right? And well, and of course, some of that like, likes and so on. You know, you want to really distinguish between the things that are actually moving your business forward, as you just said. And you know, likes are lovely, but that doesn’t mean people are buying anything. It’s the same as a marketing agency that will tell you, Oh, look, we’re doing our job, because you’ve got more visitors this week than you did last week. And the question is, so what did those visitors actually do? Anything did therefore my actual goals, goal conversions increase, or were they the wrong kind of visitor? Because there’s a huge difference there, right? So one of the things that we teach analytic students, but also obviously I try to practice myself, is if you got to decide what you want to test and what you want to change and what you want to focus on. I mean, one thing you can’t do is look at every single metric you could possibly think of the whole time, because you’ll just get completely overwhelmed. And there’s no point. There’s actually no point measuring anything unless you’re going to do something about it, unless you’ve got a reason for measuring it that you can act on. And so suppose you’ve got something that you want to play with, where you’re you’re looking to get a conversion. You’re not getting a conversion. One of the things that it’s well worth doing is to say, Can we put a value on this conversion, right? And if we can put a value on it, then we can say, right? Well, if we increase this, if we can increase the rate, we’re going to increase the outcome than the value of the outcome, right? And with and what might that increase be? And it’s often difficult to say what increase we expect, but you can do a notional one. You can say, Look, if we improve conversion rates by 1% which, unfortunately, in today’s web world, is still an improvement, right? But you know, for a lot of businesses, that will make an actual tangible difference in in revenue, yeah. So, so it’s important to think that way, and you can do that. I mean putting some sort of value on every single point where you’re measuring whether visitors do something can be really helpful. So for example, I worked with a company that B to B Company, but they had a sales process, and one of the first things that you could do was download, you know, a list of parts, specifications and so on right that detailed out what you might want to buy, and then you could download another list of shipping rates for different types of assembly or whatever it was they were doing. And then obviously you could track your orders. And so obviously orders, you know how much you’re making, because there’s a certain amount of money people are buying, right? But what’s the value of downloading a list of a spec list? But actually they did. They just put a notional like, for example, say your sale was $10 I mean, this obviously silly example, just proportionally, they would say, right, if you download the specs, that’s maybe $1 if you download the shipping rates, that tells us that you’re further down that line of making a decision, because you’re interested enough to know, okay, what’s it going to cost me to buy this in addition to the actual price, right? And so maybe that’s $3 in relation to your 10, right? And it’s all notional. But it doesn’t really matter, because what that allows you to do that they did really well is that when you’re looking at your analytics, if you add notional values to your micro goals, your steps along the way, then you can start looking at more interesting things, like, which of our marketing tactics lead to the most value in terms of those micro conversions, which is really interesting. And then you get to see how valuable things like email are, even though everybody’s likes to still say that email is dead, but it’s really not, um, you know, but you can, and then you can see things. Another thing that I is really a bugbear of mine. You know that a lot of people do social media advertising, right? Because they think that it’s all the buzz. But if, in my experience, often, if you look at social media from that perspective of how much actual value does it add to the business, it’s, it’s, you really start wondering why you’re bothering. Yeah, it’s not because there’s anything wrong in that sense of social media. But people are not on social media doing business. Us most of the time.
Scott Ritzheimer
Right, right? Unless you’re selling T shirts or something.
Philippa Gamse
Obviously, yeah, one of the other rules in the book that I don’t have picked up is one size does not fit all. Yeah, you know, whatever we say, you’ve really got to look at and say, Does this apply to my business?
Scott Ritzheimer
100% 100% one more rule. And then I’ve got another question for you that I’m interested to see your response, but Rule number two, so we’re actually going back to the beginning here. Rule number two, appoint your web Ambassador emphasizes that you have a dedicated website overseer. So what? Is a web ambassador and and like, who in an organization usually fills that role.
Philippa Gamse
So, you know, this is really interesting, because the truth is, I wrote this book a while ago, and, you know, I think, I mean, hopefully it’s still relevant, because we’re still talking about it, and I hope by the time this podcast comes out, that I will have another book on the market, which will be much more up to date. But a little while after I wrote this book, a position emerged which was called Chief Digital Officer. And I actually think that to some extent, my perspective of this web Ambassador concept was, in fact, the Chief Digital Officer in some ways. But what I was really trying to get at was the amount of times where I would see in a company or a business, different departments not talking to each other in any way that would allow for really good leverage between them and what they were selling. And you know, because on the web, it’s a web, right? We can go from here to here to here, and sometimes visitors will do that in a way that we just don’t expect. There was synergy between different departments that didn’t didn’t show up, and so they were missing out on being able to say, hey, you just bought this. And we’ve also got this service or this product that you know. And additionally, when you’re trying to be really effective, the silos, the political silos that exist, yeah, that says this department can’t have this data because it doesn’t belong to them. Where, if they had some of that data and they knew what was going on, they could say, right? This helps us to do our bit, right? And you still see all that. And what I was trying to do with the web Ambassador thing was to get beyond that, and to have somebody who had the authority to put all of this together, and not only the authority, but also the insight, the vision, the access, to put all of this together and say, right, this is how we do this holistically, across the whole organization.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that, because, you know, if you’re a teeny little company, it’s to some extent a distinction without a difference, but you’re right. As you get bigger, as these different divisions and departments start to become more solidified and complex, and, dare we say, it, more siloed, then yeah, it starts to actually split the site apart and just becomes really problematic. And I love this idea of having someone who doesn’t get their way on everything, but is responsible for coordinating all these ways into one cohesive experience for users, very cool.
Philippa Gamse
And I think some of it is just literally communication, just communication not happening. And in larger companies using it, I’ve seen it where you’ve got a multinational company where the big decisions are made somewhere else, and the local market is saying, Hey, we really need to do this. And the big decision makers are saying, No, potentially, maybe just because they can’t see the benefit, because they’re not there and they’re not getting enough data. But I, but I do still see that.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so true. Philippa, there’s a question that I have. I ask everyone. I’m gonna I’m interested to see what you have to say. So what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching and listening today knew?
Philippa Gamse
Honestly, I think if you’re not really making the most use, potentially, of your web. So we’ve been talking about websites, but the key for me to that is your analytics and what they can tell you, because just looking at the site doesn’t tell you anything, right? And to to find a company or a business that’s really making really, really full in depth use of what that information can tell them. A lot of the times, people don’t, and they do kind of stick with good, comfortable, familiar stuff, like vanity stuff. Of you know, we’re getting more this week, this this week than we did last week. But there’s no so what to it, right? So, you know, don’t measure, for the sake of it. Measure what you’re going to do something about but measure, you know.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so true. So true. Philippa, there’s some folks listening. Would just love to have some help and clarity on their website, interested in this new book that you have coming out, where can they find more out about you and the work that you do?
Philippa Gamse
Sure. So first of all, I’m on LinkedIn, and I think, honestly, I think. I am the only person in the entire world with my name, so I don’t have any Google gangers, so you can easily find me on LinkedIn, and I am very happy to connect with people. And also my website is websitesthatwin.com and on the site, there is an e book that has some stories of things that we found in analytics that we couldn’t have otherwise known, that have allowed us to make actual, specific and tangible changes to a site or even to the business, that made significant difference that we couldn’t have known without analytics. And it’s not a techie book. It’s all in English. There are no charts in it, but, you know, it’s designed to give people some inspiration and some ideas.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s awesome, excellent. Well, head on over to websitesthatwin.com. Check out the ebooks, fantastic, short and sweet, very, very powerful and sure to inspire you and your website development. Philippa, thanks for being on the show. It’s just a privilege and honor having you here today. And for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us, I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Philippa Gamse
Philippa Gamse has clocked over 25 years in digital marketing strategy and analytics, consulted with nearly 500 clients, and worked with websites that have generated hundreds of millions of dollars. Owners and marketing executives hire Philippa to find hidden insights in their web analytics that will grow their business and cut wasted spending because many are missing those “hidden gems.” Philippa is the author of “42 Rules for a Website That Wins”, endorsed by Guy Kawasaki, and has taught at three international business schools.
Want to learn more about Philippa Gamse’s work at Websites That Win International? Check out her website at https://www.websitesthatwin.com/ or connect with her on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippagamse/