Understanding Customer Journey with Ronald Gijsel

Intro: Hey, real quick before we get started. I want to tell you about a free resource I have available based on some of the stuff that we talk about in this episode. It is 5 Tools to Help You Build Websites Faster, and you could find it over on the show notes for this page, HowIBuilt.it/166. You’re probably going to head over there anyway because there’s going to be lots of great resources, but definitely, if you want that free PDF, 5 Tools to Help You Build Faster Websites, it is over at HowIBuilt.it/166. OK, let’s get on with the show.

 

Joe Casabona: As more businesses start to do commerce nearly exclusively online, it’s important to know how your customers are finding you and how they’re making decisions. Enter Ronald Gijsel. He’s the community manager and partnerships manager at Yith, a former sponsor of this show. He’s going to teach us today about the customer’s journey and free tools to help us figure out exactly what our customer’s journey is. His tips will help us understand our customers to shore, sell more, but, more importantly, create a better experience for them. I learned a lot here, and I started to implement his advice shortly after we recorded this interview, and I’m excited to start seeing results. I know that you will, too, if you follow his advice, so we’ll get to that in a minute. But first, a word from our sponsor.

 

Break: This episode is brought to you by Ahrefs. Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO toolset that solves that problem. It gives you the tools you need to rank your website in Google and get tons of search traffic. As someone who struggles with what kind of content to create or what’s ranking best in Google, or anything SEO-related, Ahrefs has been instrumental in increasing traffic to my website over the holidays. I had my best quarter for affiliate income because Ahrefs showed me my most popular pages and topics, and I was able to optimize my content and my gift guides and update them accordingly. I would have never updated one of my gift guides because I didn’t think it was that popular, and Ahrefs showed me it is my most popular page. Ahrefs makes competitive analysis easy as well. Their tools show you how your competitors are getting traffic from Google and why. You can see the pages and content that send them the most search traffic, find out exactly the key words they’re ranking for, and which backlinks are helping them rank. From there, you can replicate or improve on their strategies. Now, as I said, I don’t think I’m getting significant search traffic, so I use Ahrefs tools to help find topics worth creating pages or content for. I can easily see estimated search volumes and gauge traffic potential with their keyword explorer tool. It’s been a fantastic addition to my toolkit. Just this morning, I learned that My Everyday Carry post has been popular, and lots of people are coming, so I think it’s time to update that because it’s five years old. If you want to gain a following or just improve traffic to your website, Ahrefs is the tool for you. You can get a 7 day trial for $7 dollars over at Ahrefs.com. That’s Ahrefs.com for a seven day trial for $7 dollars. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be hooked. Again, that’s Ahrefs.com for a seven day trial for $7. Now back to the show.

 

Joe: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of How I Built It, the podcast that asks, “How did you build that?” Today my guest is Ronald Gijsel, and he is the community and partnership manager over at Yith. I’m very excited to talk to Ronald today because we’re going to be talking about something I feel I need to be a little bit better at, which is the customer’s journey as they go through your shop and re-engaging– Or, the right times to re-engage with that customer, and things like that. So Ronald, how are you today?

 

Ronald Gijsel: Hi. I’m very good, thank you very much for having me.

 

Joe: Thanks for coming on the show. Full disclosure for those listening, Yith was a sponsor of the show, but that’s not the reason I’m having Ronald on today. I’m excited to learn more about this conversation– About this topic, I should say.

 

Ronald: Yeah, no. That’s my idea. To help business owners, but also freelancers to make more sense of an e-commerce journey and pick out a couple of really good little tips that they can apply to their own business, or help customers.

 

Joe: Fantastic. Why don’t we get into it with a little bit of background information about you, so we can talk about who you are and what you do?

 

Ronald: Sure. I’m fairly new to the Yith family, and it’s very much a family. The founder is Italian, and the company was started in Catania in Sicily. Half the company is now based in Tenerife, and the remaining 50% is still in Catania. I am based in the UK, and I joined them about four months ago. Before I joined them, I ran my– Let’s call it micro-web agency because it’s micro in the sense that it was me and my wife and a few freelancers that we had to call upon. We looked after many WooCommerce stores in particular, but part of that was also getting traffic to these stores, so I qualified– I self-qualified with advanced Google Analytics applied that for many years, webmaster search console as it later changed to. I also was a Google partner for Google AdWords or Google Ads now. All those different skills together combined, I think I can paint quite a good picture for many of the listeners.

 

Joe: That’s fantastic. Did you say four months?

 

Ronald: Yes. Officially since January, however, I did some work for them in the past, especially attending Word Camps, where we met.

 

Joe: OK, cool. I was going to say, “I could’ve sworn you were working in the booth before that at a Word Camp we met.” I was like, “Oh no.” So that’s fantastic. First of all, shout out to Sicily, I am part Sicilian. I am 100% of Italian descent and– I know, that’s a rarity these days. I’m very proud to be able to say that. But you’re based in the UK, and you ran a small agency, you were also a Google partner. Yith focuses on WooCommerce extensions, so they are the number one independent WooCommerce extension shop?

 

Ronald: Very much so, yeah. Let me go back a little bit back to the history of how it started. So, Nando Pappalardo, he is the CEO, and he worked for an IT company. In 2008 he came up with the idea to use some of the trends in web development that were being seen in the US and in the UK where they were a little bit further ahead and writing blogs about– A lot of blogs, a technical and very dedicated plan he executed. Soon after that, he released his first themes, which were designed by his wife, who is an amazing UX designer. The themes went down well, and they were being sold on Theme Forest, and in years, they literally sold millions of them for a long time. They were the number one theme seller on there with those themes, and you probably remember that. They came loaded with lots of plugins and functionality, so if you have an all in one solution that was ready to go, if you have a restaurant “Here you are, here’s a restaurant with everything loaded.” But over time, these functionalities separated from the theme, so these plugins, first one was the [inaudible] search, search, and filter. But they became standalone products as well, so that’s where the journey of WooCommerce plugins started for Yith. “Yith” stands for “Your inspiration themes,” but it’s a lot less themes and a lot more plugins. We have over 100 now in our catalog. A lot of our users make use of the club membership, so you have access to all of the plugins, and you can load them on six or 30 websites. But the red line in all of this is it’s all about creating this customer journey from start to finish, so plugins includes the search, displaying products in a nice way on your website, to different checkout methods, payment methods, also a lot of admin tools. PDF invoice generation and so on, anything in between those plugins.

 

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned the customer journey again, so I’d love to get into this. I am an online educator, and I always talk about “The learner’s journey” when you’re putting together a course, you want to make sure that they have a problem, and you’re solving it through whatever actions they need to take to solve it. That they have a very clear path, it sounds like the customer’s journey is a little bit similar to that, but maybe we can talk about what exactly you mean by that first.

 

Ronald: I think a customer journey, you can have different views on that. I think a developer looks at it in a very different way to a UX designer to a web designer. I’m taking more of the stand as a data analyst, and I look at key points. Now, I appreciate that what I’m about to share and tell you need to know a little bit about Google Analytics. If not, I think this is the key point to come back to the podcast and say, “Hang on. But what was he talking about?” Otherwise, I can also share some screenshots or links, because it’s well worthwhile to go back into your Google Analytics dashboard and find these key bits of data. Let me just get started and build this picture. Data, I think if you ask any shop owner, they will probably tell you how much turnover they’ve made in the last couple of days. A week, a month, a year. How many customers they have based on the customer list, and I think much more than that you probably don’t remember, or apart from maybe your cost and so on. The key data that I think are absolutely crucial are, first of all, the average order value. Now once you’ve connected your Google Analytics to your web shop, you have to have this e-commerce enabled. It’s an extra bit of data that you can get from your analytics dashboard, including the average order value, but also total revenue and e-commerce conversion rate and so on. If you haven’t done that, if you go into– Under “Conversions” and you look under e-commerce, and it’s completely blank, I’d say “Google and find out how you can enable that.” Anyway, once you’ve got it enabled, you’ll see the average order value. That’s a key metric because, with that, you can multiply it, and you can do your own maths sums. The next bit of information that you need to find out is the order frequency. So in order to do that, you look on the audience and behavior, and the behavior– You don’t have to separate or segment off those that have made a purchase. The longer time span, you can go back on that the better because that means you have more data. All of this is possible with just a free to use Google analytics, no premium, nothing. It doesn’t cost you anything. Now what you find is that most purchases are made on day zero. People come in, they make a purchase, and that’s it. But if you then see the view of frequency and recency, you will see that a lot of people will come back very soon after making that first purchase. I’ve seen it on several shops that you have a bit of a peak on the next day. Then again, either in one week, two weeks, three weeks, or four weeks, there’s another increase in repeat purchase. Those parts of the frequency whereby a customer comes back for a second purchase, I think, is worth absolute gold because that’s in a way based on your historical data looking into the future and seeing when you can target and get them ready for a next purchase.

 

Joe: Gotcha. I’m going to stop you right there for a minute because there’s a couple of really good pieces of information there. First, that you’re finding out all this information with the free version of Google Analytics. I’m going to find a video to link to for you to enable e-commerce data, and you’re right. If I go into my WooCommerce shop I can look at sales and revenue and churn for memberships and stuff like that, but the things that you’re talking about are things that I haven’t paid attention to, which is order frequency and when do they come back after they make that initial purchase. Like you said, those are important because you can start to prime them to make the next purchase.

 

Ronald: Exactly. It’s the glass crystal ball looking into the future. You know exactly when a certain percentage of your customers comes back.

 

Joe: Which is great. I’m sure there’s probably a lot of marketing around that. There are some brands that email me every day with the same sale, but there are some that will email me two weeks after I make my first purchase. “How did you like that purchase? You might also like this.” Maybe in two weeks time, I’m ready to make another purchase because I loved the first one so much.

 

Ronald: Exactly. Those emails, especially by the big companies, they’re not coincidence. They have big data sets and machine learning that will help them predict these things, but most people can’t afford several thousand dollars per month in these suites of marketing machines. These couple little tips I think are worth gold for the small and medium sized businesses. Now the next one is attribution views, it’s quite a new little theme within Google Analytics, and you’ll find it in your top– Sorry, bottom left corner and assessed with a label “Attribution.” When you click on it the first time, it will ask you to activate it, and then it takes you 72 hours to activate it. Once it’s activated, and then you start experimenting with it, you’ll see a whole new level of data. Again, it’s there. It’s free to use. You just have to activate it. One of the things you can then see are conversion paths, and it will tell you, “What was the first point of contact with your shop? What was the second? Was it through email marketing? Was it through direct affiliate?” And so on. Another one is the conversion path lengths, so how many touch points a customer needs on average before they convert in buying a product? Most people will think it’s the one time, it’s that one Google ad they hit and purchased something. Because that’s what Google says has happened, “You’ve had so many clicks, you’ve had so many purchases.” But actually, at least 30-40% need more than one touchpoint before they make their purchase. Because think about it yourself, if you buy a pair of shoes while you go to one shop, you Google it again, and you go to another shop, you compare prices, and you might leave it. Then somebody is hitting you back with an abandoned cart email. It’s all happening in your own behavior when you go to different– When you go online shopping. Understanding your own customers and how they behave with your shop is another way of looking into the future and targeting that. I’ve looked at a shop where somebody actually– I think it was 1%, but I needed about 50 touch points before they made that purchase. They will come back eventually, you just have to be there and keep reminding them, because once they’ve made that first purchase, they are our customer potentially for life

 

Joe: That’s a really good point. Again, looking at my own experience, I assume– Not so much anymore, but I used to assume I would just tweet, “My new course is available, check it out.” I expected people to click on that tweet and then buy the course. But that’s not the case, and they need to understand the problem I’m solving. They need to be ready to purchase. Maybe they’re not ready to purchase, and again looking at one of my favorite brands Untuck It, they make fantastic button down shirts for men of a certain build. I saw their ad during a baseball game, and then I saw their store, and then I checked out their site, and I think it was by the fourth time I was ready to buy a couple of shirts from them. I think that those little pieces of information you’re giving us about customer behavior is so important because it’s not just “If you build it, they will come,” it’s “You have to prime them and convince them and then make them a customer, and then remind them about how much they like your stuff.”

 

Ronald: Exactly. You’re building this, what do you call it, mousetrap, or a net around your customer with lots of different touch points. But when you create that, you think you’re just throwing money down the pit, especially Google ads. It’s one of those things where you can just spend money, money, money on, and never see any result. But when you then compare it with a first click interaction and a large click interaction, you’ll see a huge difference because they maybe have come through your shop the first time and didn’t make a purchase. Then after a few more interactions, they came back to you directly, and now it’s a direct customer. With that, I mean those who remember your website, that type it in and then make that purchase. You don’t think that the money or the purchase or the conversion is just down to that last click, the direct traffic. But actually, it was the Google ad that made that first sale. Google attribution view is amazing, and you should check it out because you can see all the different paths and how many conversions have come through it. I’m literally looking at one of a customer, and I’ll just quickly run through it. This is the journey from start to finish, and I’ll run through it quickly. We have referral, organic search, referral, two direct visits, another organic, direct referral, direct organic, direct email, and three more direct. Then they made the purchase. So we have organic, we have referral, could be an affiliate, you have email marketing, and then they made a purchase. Each of those touchpoints do take a little bit of a share of your investment in acquiring the customer. Now, we talked a little bit about the different scenarios of acquiring a customer, and every shop will have a value put against an acquisition. Whether it’s a marketing budget or Google Ads budget, or even going to speak at a conference. There is money allocated in promoting your business and bringing people in, so here’s a scenario. You have a one time customer. The value is $100, and the investment to acquire this customer is 20%, so $20. If you build on a repeat business and your average frequency, which you find out in one of the first bits of data that I shared with you, how you can find that out, the frequency of purchase is an average 2 1/2. That’s average order value of $100, now has actually on a lifetime become $250, but the investment to acquire that customer is still at $20. But per order that now has gone down to 8%. Here’s the third scenario. You now realize that the acquisition in real terms only cost you 8%. Now, if you are prepared to increase your investment a little bit more, to let’s say back to 20% and become a little bit more aggressive in acquiring the customer, you can position yourself much higher above your competition. Because you are focusing on getting that customer the first time and then focusing on repeat business. The classic example is Amazon. Amazon gives things pretty much away for nothing. You can’t compete with it, but they know they will have you for life. The repeat business is probably in the thousands. I try to think of how many purchases I’ve made in the past. That’s a really obvious example of it.

 

Joe: Every so often, I like to download my– You can download everything that you’ve ever purchased off Amazon in a CSV. I like to check in and see how much I’ve spent with them over the years, and it’s staggering. But everything you’re talking about right now goes back to an important– It’s not a theory, it’s an important axiom of e-commerce. Which is “The easiest person to sell to is your current customer.”

 

Ronald: Exactly.

 

Joe: I’ve heard time and time again on this show too many businesses focus too much on acquiring new customers when they should focus on taking care of and marketing to their current customers because those people have already bought into what you’re selling.

 

Ronald: Absolutely. But I’m saying also, and I completely agree, that because you have this much higher value customer that you’ve managed to retain, you can, therefore, spend a little bit more on acquiring the customer in the first place. Because you know you’ll get a much higher value out of it in the long term.

 

Joe: Yeah. That makes sense.

 

Ronald: It gives you confidence.

 

Joe: Yeah. You’re saying it might cost $20 to acquire that customer off the first purchase, but over time as they buy more stuff from you, that cost per acquisition goes down. So that initial number doesn’t look so bad over time. It’s a balancing act.

 

Ronald: Right. All you need to know is the average order value or your frequency and your customer’s shopping behavior. If you’re confident with that, and that’s based on your historical data that you can find out through Google Analytics or for free, you can be a lot more confident in acquiring your customer and looking after them. Next point I want to talk to you about is the actual customer churn and how it starts. I know it’s very theoretical, but by keeping it open, you can imagine that in your own scenario. Whether you run a shop or whether you sell services online or you create and make downloads available through e-commerce or e-course, for example. The acquisition people come eventually onto your site, and whether that’s the first time, third time or fourth time, they eventually add a product or service to a basket in order to checkout. That’s your first really good moment to increase the average order value already because we said, on average is $100 dollars. But if you can increase that by 20%, that acquisition still cost you only $20 the first time on average. But if you increase that by 20%, the actual acquisition already reduces. So ways of doing that, the most obvious one is, of course, upselling. “If you liked this product, you’ll like that product.” But what I’ve found through all the years of working with e-commerce is that’s never utilized enough, because WooCommerce especially will have your product and then you said recommended products– Very few clients I work with feel that incorrectly, and that’s it. From now on, you will not be reminded of any other product. Whether it’s in the shop, whether you can find it or not, find it. Looking at that whole journey of all the different moments before they’ve made that purchase to upgrade the order when you’re on a basket, whether it’s a pop up because you’ve put this item in your basket, “Maybe you want to upgrade? Why not buy another one, and I’ll give you 20% off?” Or “Most people who like this also bought that.” “Really? I didn’t even see that in the shopping catalog. Great. I’ll have that.” Whether that works or not, even then, there are more opportunities. Because once you’ve checked out and you’ve paid for it, you come onto a thank you page. Again, it’s a great moment where you think, and you can suggest something else. Whether you buy dog foods and you then sell dog bowls or placemats, for example. The likelihood– This happens over time where you can apply the science or your analytics on that, and you can figure out what the additional product can be when people purchase product A, and they might like product B.

 

Joe: Gotcha. So right here we’ve got a few touchpoints, once you get the customer in the door and they are ready to buy something, they put something in the cart, upsells and cross sales are something. As you said, they are “Built into WooCommerce,” but not necessarily used appropriately. But what I liked is after payment on the thank you page, there is another opportunity. Again, if we look at Amazon as a classic example, as soon as you pay, it’s “Thank you for your order.” Then below that, it’s “Here’s other stuff that people bought after they bought the thing you just got.”

 

Ronald: Yeah. These things you don’t need plugins for that either, you can do it yourself because you have product short codes. Once you’ve figured out where your thank you page is, you utilize that by adding a code in the PHP file, for example. It could be a feedback form, and it could be an additional product. I looked after shoe shop, and they’ve added an additional shoe polish after people paid out. The uptake was about 25%, and before they did that, they hardly sold any. The order hasn’t left the warehouse yet, so adding another payment and adding the shoe polish with an additional discount is an easy one to make.

 

Joe: Yeah, that’s a great point. Even if we’re talking about, say, digital products. I sell courses, so you could imagine that somebody buys a high dollar course from me, maybe the upsell or the post thank you page sell is an hour of my time to get you set up in the course. Or, after you take the course, “Congratulations. You’ve finished. How would you like some one on one time with me to answer questions the course didn’t answer?” Anything like that.

 

Ronald: Yeah, exactly. Another one is if the course is available for, let’s say, six months to one year, add another year onto it or maybe a family member, depending on what type of course it is. Because you’ve already sold it, you might as well upgrade it with an additional service. The credit card is out. The next one that I’m going to suggest is surprisingly easy. “Thank you” emails. “Thank you for your purchase. Your order has been dispatched.” The opening rate for emails is quite often higher than 100%, which means people open it more than once. What did they order? When is it going to arrive? Let me check it again. All these questions, people are anxious. “When is it going to arrive? I’ve paid for this beautiful item or for this service,” that’s a moment. It’s a key moment in that email, in the footer. Or someone’s like, “Maybe you forgot something. You bought product A, how about product B?” When you look at the frequency, and I’ve seen this in several shops, you’ll see that the frequency after the first purchase on day one and day two is significantly higher than day four, five, and six. Because the shopping experience is fresh in a month, maybe they saw something, and they weren’t quite ready to purchase it. To hit the client with an email, a reminder to say, “How about this item? We know you’ve looked at it,” and give an additional discount to just help them make the purchase.

 

Joe: That goes along with another psychological phenomenon, that somebody makes a purchase and a second purchase doesn’t seem so bad. Especially if the second purchase is less than that first purchase. A really good example, when we bought our house in May, I spent $1,000 dollars on new office equipment and stuff like that. I thought, “I just shelled out so much money on the house. I might as well invest a little extra to make my office exactly what I want it to be.”

 

Ronald: Absolutely. It’s classic, and I think it’s a lot easier to get for people to spend 2 times $5 than one time $8.

 

Joe: That’s a good point, too, because you’re reducing sticker shock a little bit. You’re taking advantage– I’m going to say taking advantage here even though that has a negative connotation, but you are able to add more value to your customers journey as you’re saying because you are offering them more value based on the stuff that they’ve purchased. You are offering them a discount that they may not have otherwise had, and you’re reducing the sticker shock, which maybe helps them see the value a little bit more.

 

Ronald: Absolutely, yes. This is not about quick selling or to make as much money as possible, and this is about a relationship. If you imagine entering a shop, you browse the aisles, and you don’t come to the checkout. Lots of different things that remind you, whether it’s a chocolate bar or a gift card for somebody else. Even as you leave the shop with your trolley fully loaded with shopping and groceries, there is– In the UK it’s the national lottery by the counter, right by the end by the exit. How many peoples queue up with their fully loaded trolleys and just buy that one more thing? Whether it’s a magazine, a newspaper, or a lottery ticket. Shops do it, and seeing that and trying to do that in your own online environments, and I think it makes a lot more sense.

 

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. Like you said, this is not about quick selling. This isn’t a get rich quick thing. Because as you said earlier, it’s going to take time and money for the acquisition. So you’re spending time and money to make them a customer, and once they’re in, you want to make sure that they are getting the most out of that relationship. It’s not just saying, “Here’s everything I have to offer.” It’s saying, “You bought X. I think Y would be a nice companion. I think it’ll add more value and it’ll give you more of what you’re looking for. It will help you solve the problems that you need to solve.”

 

Ronald: These are all experiments because you don’t know if whether your second purchase would be, whether that’s the right fit. You might need to do some A and B testing, you could look at historical data, one of the WordPress plugins all in one export. Is it all in one export? It can export data and detailed data, and you pick out the customer orders and products. When you have a lot of that data, you can separate that and say, well, what’s the first product they bought? How soon did they come back, and what was the second product? If you have lots of customers, you can see patterns, and based on that, and you can then apply that into your upsell and cross-sell. For shop owners, it’s probably an obvious one, but if it’s not.

 

Joe: No, I think that’s a really good point. That you should experiment a little bit and see what works, what doesn’t work. But as we approach the end of this episode, I think you’ve taken us on a really– This is a very structured way to do things. Setup Google Analytics the right way, I’ll have detailed notes for this episode because there’s a lot of step by steps. But look at the average order value, look at the behavior, the attribution views and the cost per acquisition, and then experiment in various places for upsells, cross sells, and communicating better with the customer.

 

Ronald: Yeah, exactly. As you gain experience, you become a lot more confident in building up this relationship with the customer, because with the order frequency, you can also see that a lot of repeat business is made after two weeks, or maybe it’s one month. Then using some sort of email marketing tool, whether it’s free to use Mailchimp or a more advanced Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign and then applying that science into the customer journey. Then do exactly the same, hit them again with the day after which some sort of thank you email, two weeks later after that and so on. Your repeat frequency buying cycle, if your customer increases, making the cost to acquire them a lot less.

 

Joe: Just a touch on that again, there are– I haven’t used Mailchimp in a long time, but the email marketing tools I do use like ConvertKit or Jilt do allow for things like that. In ConvertKit, when somebody makes a purchase in WooCommerce, they get tagged with that purchase. Then I could set up a sequence to email them that day, “Thank you for your purchase. The next day, “Have you logged into the course yet? I think you should check it out.” And then if I know that they’re likely to buy an hour of consulting or a follow up course in two or three weeks time, I can tell ConvertKit to email them in three weeks and say, “I hope you’re enjoying the course. If you have any questions, let me know. By the way, if you want some one on one time with me, you can buy it.”

 

Ronald: I think absolutely. I know you don’t mind to spend a little bit more on a premium tool, but Jilt is a great example of that. Absolutely.

 

Joe: Awesome. As we wrap up here, you’ve given us a lot of tips. But let’s say that somebody is– They’ve recently set up their WooCommerce shop. What are two or three things that they can do today to start jumping into improving the customer journey?

 

Ronald: Absolutely, the first thing is to connect it with Google Analytics. Again, search console is crucial because it will help to understand where you’re positioned organically. What are the key words? What are the sort of things that people are looking for? Same is to analyze your search functionality inside your WooCommerce shop and make sure that each search query gets recorded in analytics. Again, there are lots of tutorials on that. Then it’s applying the tools to improve your WooCommerce shop. One by one, bit by bit, look at first finding the right product. Upselling it, abandoned cart, throughout the checkout, “Thank you” page and email reminder, or whether it’s a confirmation of an order and dispatch, and automate and improve on the whole full journey. But Amazon is the best example, and we can all create it if we have the time and money. But that’s one thing I’ve found out is that people overlooked that. Look at the most obvious examples around you.

 

Joe: Until you mentioned that earlier in this episode, it didn’t occur to me because I think “I’m selling a digital course.” It’s not the same as selling physical products, but it is– You have somebody who likes what you’re doing, who is giving you money to support that thing, and you’re not going to be able to live forever on the $100 bucks that they spent five years ago or whatever.

 

Ronald: I think digital and e-learning, you’re partnering with other people and cross-selling your service with somebody else who does a complementary service, and vice-versa. A great ways of adding value to each other’s product.

 

Joe: Absolutely. That’s fantastic, and we’ll have to–

 

Ronald: I think we could talk about it for many more hours.

 

Joe: I think we’ll have to have another episode talking about maybe e-learning specifically, but this has been great, Ronald. I do need to ask you my favorite question, of course, which is, do you have any trade secrets for us? You’ve given us so much, but is there some observation that you’ve made that will be very helpful to the listeners?

 

Ronald: You’ll have to clip out this pause because I wasn’t quite ready for that.

 

Joe: The pause is the best part. I want to make a compilation of everybody, every single one of my guests pretty much says “Trade secret?” and then they pause. I think I’m just going to have a whole episode of that.

 

Ronald: Yeah, right. I’m going to go back to [attribution]. So, clap your hands.

 

Joe: I do need to ask my favorite question, which is, do you have any trade secrets for us?

 

Ronald: I think I’ve mentioned it already three times, and it’s enabling Google attribution view. To me, when I started experimenting with that and looking at first click and last click and data driven click, a whole new world opened to me on customer behavior. And it’s there, for free.

 

Joe: Fantastic. I know that as soon as we are done recording here, I am going to do that, I’m going to spend a little bit of extra time looking through my Google Analytics and improving my shop. So, I appreciate that. “Enable Google attribution view,” I said this earlier, but I’ll have a link in the show notes which you can find over at HowIBuilt.it for how to do that. Ronald, thank you so much for joining us today. Where can people find you?

 

Ronald: You can find me on Twitter, @Just2Ronald. I’m also on LinkedIn, and you will have a link. Check it out, send me a message on there as well. I’m always happy to have a conversation and support.

 

Joe: Awesome. I willing to all of that in the show notes. Ronald, thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate it.

 

Ronald: Thank you. Bye, everyone.

 

Outro: Thanks so much to Ronald for joining us this week. The way that he uses Google Analytics was really impressive to me. I hope that you were able to follow him as he talked through some of these instructions. There will be a link to some of these videos over in the show notes at HowIBuilt.it/166. Thanks to Ahrefs for sponsoring this episode. I’m so excited to have them onboard because they have helped me really up my content’s game. If you’re following me on other channels, then you know that I’ve been just pumping out a ton of content lately, and Ahrefs has been helpful in determining what kind of content I should put out there. Definitely be sure to check them out and thank them for supporting the show. Now I do have a special offer for you if some of the stuff that Ronald was talking about was great, but you’re wondering maybe where to start at the level before this, getting your website up and running quickly, I have a free PDF for you. 5 Tools for Building Faster Websites. You can find it right on the show notes page over at HowIBuilt.it/166. It is completely free, so be sure to check it out. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, get out there and build something.