Revenue Rehab: It's like therapy, but for marketers
July 17, 2024

Continuous Conversion: Why Your Website Needs Constant Care

This week our host Brandi Starr is joined by Travis McAshan, Founder and CEO of Glide Design. Meet Travis McAshan, a pioneering leader in web optimization and user-centered design. With an extensive background in planning, designing, and optimizing...

This week our host Brandi Starr is joined by Travis McAshan, Founder and CEO of Glide Design.

Meet Travis McAshan, a pioneering leader in web optimization and user-centered design. With an extensive background in planning, designing, and optimizing marketing websites, Travis brings a wealth of knowledge on how to successfully drive continuous improvement and maximize conversions.

In this episode of Revenue Rehab, Brandi and Travis dive into the intricacies of conversion optimization, dissecting why frequent, incremental changes are more effective than major overhauls. They explore actionable strategies for maintaining a user-centered focus, utilizing tools like Hotjar and Crazy Egg to gather real-time data, and implementing split testing to ensure your website consistently delivers high ROI. Join us as they unpack the challenges of modern digital marketing and provide a roadmap for sustained success.

Bullet Points of Key Topics + Chapter Markers:

Topic #1 Incremental Change vs. Major Redesigns [08:21]

“Frequent, incremental changes are far more effective than a complete overhaul. When you redesign, you risk disrupting the user experience too drastically,” McAshan advises. Brandi Starr acknowledges, “It's a challenge to resist the allure of a fresh look, but what you’re saying is that those small, continuous adjustments can lead to better outcomes in the long run.”

Topic #2 Tools for User-Centered Optimization [17:45]

“Tools like Hotjar, Clarity, or Crazy Egg can provide invaluable insights into how real users interact with your site,” McAshan highlights.* He elaborates, “Seeing where users click, where they get stuck—these are goldmines for data-driven optimization.” Brandi Starr adds, “I think many of us overlook how transformative these tools can be for improving the customer journey.” 

Topic #3 Strategic Planning and Metrics [27:12]

“A strategic plan needs to be both user-centered and data-focused,” McAshan emphasizes. He asserts, “Measuring the impact of changes is crucial. Without meaningful metrics, you’re just guessing.” Brandi Starr concurs, “The challenge is sticking to the plan amidst competing priorities, but as you’ve said, having that structured approach can make all the difference.”

So, What’s the One Thing You Can Do Today?

Travis McAshan’s ‘One Thing’ is to embrace incremental and meaningful changes to your website. “Instead of gearing up for a full-scale redesign, start focusing on small, user-centered changes you can implement frequently. Use tools like Hotjar, Clarity, or Crazy Egg to observe real user behavior and make data-backed decisions. This allows you to continuously optimize for conversion rates and demonstrate ROI, keeping the focus on usability and functionality over just aesthetics. Incorporate a strategic plan that involves your entire team and stick to it, ensuring that every change made is aligned with your business goals and user needs.” 

Buzzword Banishment:

Travis’s Buzzword to Banish is ‘fast follow’. Travis expresses his frustration with this term, saying, “Honestly, I feel like ‘fast follow’ is just an excuse to not prioritize properly. It’s a buzzword that masks poor planning and execution.” He emphasizes that in the dynamic world of website optimization and marketing, prioritization is key, and phrases like ‘fast follow’ often lead to misguided decisions and wasted resources.

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Transcript

Brandi Starr [00:00:36]:
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Revenue Rehab. I am your host, Brandi Starr, and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Travis McAshin. Travis is the founder and CEO of Glide, an award winning, purpose led digital creative agency based in Austin, Texas. With nearly 20 years of experience, Travis and his team are dedicated to creating beautiful, functional, and high performing online experiences for startups, nonprofits, and beloved brands that share a passion for making a positive impact in the world. Travis, welcome to Revenue rehab. Your session begins now.

Travis McAshan [00:01:21]:
Brandi, thank you so much. I'm just thrilled to be here, and I appreciate the time.

Brandi Starr [00:01:26]:
Awesome. Well, I am excited to have you. And before we dive into our topic today, I like to break the ice with a little wooza moment that I call buzzword banishment. So tell me, what industry buzzword would you like to get rid of? Forever?

Travis McAshan [00:01:47]:
Man, I made a list. I have so many things, but always the challenge is you got to pick one. And if I were to pick one for me, it would probably be. I don't know why this is such a pet peeve, but it would be fast follow. There's just something about this word that is contrived, in my opinion, in terms of prioritization, and I get it. You know, we talk to a lot of people, a lot of marketing leaders, a lot of business owners who have all kinds of ideas, and you can't get them all done at the same time. And it's natural that there's a progression or sequence of how you want to do things. We operate in our business this way way, too.

Travis McAshan [00:02:22]:
Just looking at a fast follow, like, maybe it's the alliteration, maybe it's the presumption that's baked into it. I don't know. But, yeah, if I could never hear that word again, I'd be just fine.

Brandi Starr [00:02:35]:
Okay, well, I can definitely commit that we will not be talking about fast follow in our conversation. Yeah, I'm not even sure where that one came from. Like, most people just say, like, phase two or we're going to.

Travis McAshan [00:02:47]:
Yes, that's totally fine. I'm a big fan of phase two.

Brandi Starr [00:02:52]:
I guess it's a way of saying we're going to move to phase two really quickly, I guess.

Travis McAshan [00:02:57]:
Yeah. Take a breath first. Come on, guys.

Brandi Starr [00:03:00]:
Yes. We won't even get into how quickly sometimes business tries to move without that pause. But now that we've gotten that off our chest, tell me, what brings you to revenue rehab today?

Travis McAshan [00:03:15]:
Well, I once heard a definition of the word for expert as someone who's failed in every possible way in a very narrow field. So I have a lifetime of experience selling and making marketing websites, and ultimately, more specifically, planning, designing, building, optimizing marketing websites that are beautiful, useful, all these good things. I think what brings me here is what I'm most passionate about is maybe a little counterintuitive, and it would be this. So I'm speaking to all these marketing leaders. Things like that would be, don't redesign your website. You know, so here I am. I don't know if there's any other person that will come on your podcast that has been personally involved in more website redesigns in their entire life than I have. I mean, I'm not bragging, just saying, just this is what I've been doing my entire adult life.

Travis McAshan [00:04:03]:
And for me to say that is a big statement, because this is my entire business. You know, I run a company that offers the service. The primary core service is to plan and design custom marketing websites. And, you know, for me to come to this conclusion is a massive story. Art over a lifetime. And so I hope I've got the attention of some of the folks that are listening to this podcast. And so I would say that is my hook. If I.

Travis McAshan [00:04:33]:
If I was writing a song, my hook is, don't redesign your website. And, you know, what do I mean by that? And I would say, for me, I've been involved in a lot of projects, and there's a lot of projects, even with glide over the years. Again, as an expert, as someone who's failed in every possible way, not all website designs and redesigns are successful. And there's a lot of things that you can do to screw it up, and there's a few things that you can do to get it right. And I think my hope for this call would be to just be a part of helping you accomplish success if and when you endeavor to improve your online experience as a marketing leader. So that's the pitch. That's the hook. And I would say I have a lot of things to say about this.

Travis McAshan [00:05:17]:
There's kind of a couple of points that I've thought about. And I would say that's the hook. The refrain, if it's a song and there's a chorus, would be to be user centered and business aware. And there's a lot to that. But I think that ultimately the air that we should breathe as marketing leaders is to be customer centered. One of the things that I love in reading your book, obviously your book and your cohorts, your fellow partners in the business, was how fractal marketing is. I mean, when you zoom in or zoom out, it's always about the visitor, it's always about the customer, it's always about the user. You're speaking at the level of all of the major business functions, from marketing to sales, to operations, to support to success.

Travis McAshan [00:06:04]:
And it's just really cool to see that as you zoom in to just one slice of the customer journey, which is the marketing website, it's the same thing. How can we be user centered? So anyway, that's what I'm passionate about and I hope that we could talk about today.

Brandi Starr [00:06:17]:
Awesome. And I appreciate the absolute shameless plug for the book, for those who have not read it, CMo to CRO the revenue takeover by the next generation executive. You can get it. Most places that books are sold online. And so, travis, as we dig in, because I do think that this is a great conversation. And there are so many places where I talk to people and there is, you know, they recognize something is not working with the web and the web experience. And the first thought is, okay, it's time to redesign the website. And so before we really dive into the topic, I believe in setting intentions.

Brandi Starr [00:06:57]:
It gives us focus, it gives us purpose, and most important, it gives us an understanding of what we should expect from our conversation today. So for the heads of marketing listening, what do you want people to take away from our discussion?

Travis McAshan [00:07:12]:
So that's such a great question. I love the concept of intentionality. And ultimately for marketing leaders, they are accountable really for ROI, for delivering opportunity and potential sales opportunity for their organization, especially in b two B. And so this accountability flows up, right? You, the person listening to this podcast, may not be the person that's making changes on the marketing website or even planning those changes, but ultimately, you are accountable for this key piece of your marketing strategy, which is generally the digital hub of a lot of the activities that you're doing. And so the intentionality is that I was thinking about this a lot of, from a marketing perspective, you're either thinking about doing a redesign for a website in the next one to three years. You're in the middle of a redesign. God help you. Or you or your predecessor has completed a website redesign in the last one to three years.

Travis McAshan [00:08:13]:
So this is permeating everyone's experience as a leader in marketing. And so this idea of don't redesign your website, what does that even mean? So the intentionality here, the intention that I'd like to set is there's three principles that I think that you can ascribe to that will help contribute to a more successful version of how you run your organization, your marketing organization, and achieve success online, which is don't redesign your website. Instead, make frequent incremental changes that are user centered. If you must redesign your website, maybe it's a brand, a complete brand overhaul. Maybe it's just a gigantic load of technical debt. Then bee function over form b, you know, usability and information over look and feel and aesthetics. And then finally, whatever you do in any phase, whether it's, it's, you know, you're thinking about a redesign or you've done one, it's make meaningful, I would say meaningfully measure the success and optimize over time. So test, measure and test.

Travis McAshan [00:09:23]:
So those three things. So, you know, frequent incremental changes are better. If you must redesign, focus on form over function over, you know, so functionality over look and feel, and then measure and test over time.

Brandi Starr [00:09:37]:
Okay, so I want to go back to this concept of making frequent strategic updates to the website. So I am in the bucket of people who just went through a redesign. We just launched our new website in March, and it was definitely time for a full overhaul. We had some of that technical debt. We had a lot of changes in our brand identity and positioning, and so it definitely was necessary. But I am of the mindset of, we are not doing this again for a long time. So thinking about those frequent and strategic changes, like a lot of times, what happens is you have your web team that is managing the website and they're consistently looking at, you know, what's broken, the requests that come in, you know, where that goes, all those sorts of things. But at a CMO or a VP level, the website is not necessarily something that is consistently top of mind to lean into.

Brandi Starr [00:10:43]:
And so with the notion of making those frequent and strategic changes, like, talk to me more about what should we be thinking about, how should we be planning that? It helps. I mean, if nothing else, selfishly helps me understand what I should be thinking about now that we've gone through this process. But I don't think that it is something that most companies are doing or that most cmos are thinking about. So I'd love to hear there.

Travis McAshan [00:11:11]:
Yeah, that's a great question. And it's statistically proven that they are not thinking about this. I mean, HubSpot had a study where they asked marketing leaders, how often are you making changes, meaningful changes to your site? And half of all marketers said they were making one or less meaningful changes every year. And that's just a huge, huge lost opportunity. Right? And there was another study that came out back in 2017. I regret not having the reference. Maybe we can post that in the subtitles. But it was that marketers spend five to eight times as much money driving traffic to the site as conversion.

Travis McAshan [00:11:52]:
So they're spending all this money creating opportunity at the top of the funnel, but not spending a lot of time thinking about, I mean, I see this all the time. A brand organization will spend $100,000 on a rebrand with all kinds of market insights and research, and then on the talent, they'll spend all kinds of money on mesh. I think in your book you said there are 91 tools for the average enterprise company in their Martech revop tech stack. And I, I just thought, you know, so when they're doing paid advertising, marketing efforts on top of funnel drive, but then the website is just like, oh, let's just design a website, you know, and so I think that, you know, and so I think that using information. So kind of going back to your original question is, you know, what should we be doing when we're making incremental changes? Well, the first step is, Brandy, I could just imagine you've just finished this website redesign. Like, how excited are you to go make a bunch more changes to it? Like, zero excited. Right? Like, you know, you're like, good lord, I don't want to look at that website for at least another two years, you know? And so I think this is, you know, you mentioned in your book a lot about how, what you're recommending this holistic change to an open concept, you know, model of rebobs, which is beautiful and awesome. And I think you preface the idea with, like, this is going to be really hard work and people may not like you, you know, when you make these.

Travis McAshan [00:13:14]:
So I kind of think the same thing when it comes to the website. Like, if you've just got done with the website redesign and you come to your team and said, hey, guys, we need to have an incremental improvement changement plan, change plan to our website, that never ends. Like, you're basically saying, let's do a website redesign for the rest of time. And, you know, that's a painful thing to bring to your team when they just got done. And so my argument would be, if you breathe the air again, going back to the fact that what I'm saying, this is my song. My song is don't redesign your website. The refrain is be user centered. And business awareness, that's the course.

Travis McAshan [00:13:50]:
And so being user centered means to understand what the users are doing on your site. Wouldn't it be great for you to know, Brandi, like, what exactly people are doing and if it resulted in success or failure beyond just maybe lead form generation increase or decrease understanding what people are doing? So I think that you preface any incremental changes with two ideas, feature improvements, things that you didn't make, that didn't make the cut, you know, in the original. Maybe it's a feature, maybe you wanted to have a knowledge base, you know, because you have a broad swath of clients that are, that are coming to your site and you want to be able to answer those questions better so you don't have to, like, one off, answer each one. But that didn't make the cut in the redesign. Okay? That feature doesn't need to be split tested. You just know you need it. You know? So get that done right. So you put that in a backlog, and then there might be other things that are complete assumptions if they have not been user centered from the beginning, if you didn't have customer voice, if you didn't diagnose and prescribe based on data, then it's an assumption.

Travis McAshan [00:14:56]:
So I would say post launch, the best thing you could do is test that assumption versus just waiting to see how it's going to perform. And the problem with waiting to see, especially in a full website redesign, is you change ten things. You don't know which of the ten are going to be good or bad. So if you see your conversion go up or down, or you see whatever goal that you were striving for go up or down, you're not going to know what you did to change it because you've redesigned everything without incremental changes and without testing, it's just going to be really difficult. You're just shooting in the dark, I think. Again, adding features and then maybe for marketing leaders, just budgeting, we call it continuous improvement. So there is something called CRO, conversion rate optimization. This is the more pure version of, okay, I have a theory, and now I'm going to put it into a test and an a b test.

Travis McAshan [00:15:49]:
I'm going to test a headline, a button, a whole page, you know, multivariate, you know, multiple tests. What I'm proposing is something maybe interstitial to that, which would be continuous improvement. And the idea is you're continuously improving your site over time. And it will, it could include a b testing, but it could also include future improvements. It could also include, you know, listening to stakeholders inside your company and, you know, and adding things that will help the customer journey over time. So does that kind of, you know, contribute to that thought?

Brandi Starr [00:16:23]:
No, it does. And so a thought that I was having here in, in trying to narrow that a little more is the other thing that I see happen is I have just thinking about some of my clients. One of the complaints I hear is we're making too many changes to the website and that it does feel a bit haphazard in that there is some, you know, there's this marketing initiative and so it's like, let's add another page to the site, or I'm on this page and it doesn't have this, but I really need this for, you know, this initiative or add something for the conference here or, you know, whatever it seems that there is, you know, they're making frequent changes. They may not necessarily be strategic changes. And so I want to speak a little more tactically for a second because I think we talked, you know, kind of big picture strategically, why this is important and what we should be thinking about. But where you've had clients that, you know, I'm always, you know, I lead operations in addition to marketing. So I'm always thinking about how you can operationalize things because there are a lot of ideas that will come up of like, oh, it'd be great if this was on the website or we should change that, that, you know, they come out as ideas or requests. How can we tactically be a bit more purposeful in figuring out what changes to make so that we're not just changing a bunch of things at the whim of, you know, whoever's requesting something.

Brandi Starr [00:18:06]:
Because I think that's a lot of times how people get to where they need a whole redesign is because they've just done this or that or the other, and now it's like, oh, this thing is a mess.

Travis McAshan [00:18:16]:
So that's a lot to unpack. But, you know, essentially what you're saying is the kind of like current state, future state, current state is there's a lot of folks that are making a lot of changes. So they're sitting here looking at me going, well, Travis, we have twelve different people making changes to our website on a weekly basis. So we're doing incremental. So maybe the narrowing of focus would be it's not about change. It's about incremental change for improvement or growth driven change. And so the first thing to be more thoughtful is to just carve out a budget for this. It might be you have marketing activities happening with your team, but is it holistic and is it organized, and are the teams communicating? And are you making changes based on, you said, strategic? I love the, I mean, strategic can mean a million things to a million people, in my opinion.

Travis McAshan [00:19:09]:
I define it as what is your current state? What is your future desired state? What is the difference between those two? Which is the gap analysis? You know, what is, what is the evaluation of resources and constraints and what is your roadmap to get there? You know, and so assuming that you have this strategy, then it would be strategic, frequent and incremental changes. And so then how do you create a strategy? Well, you know, in my opinion, it all starts with going back again to the user and saying, okay, who are our ideal audiences? One of the things with most large organizations is they have multiple audiences. And so you have to account for all of these audiences and understanding their customer journey. And so, you know, most sophisticated marketing teams have all kinds of data on their ICP and on their buyer Personas. They have market research, they have a lot of things that have data. And you mentioned this in your book. It's like, okay, we might have twelve different platforms that are giving us data, but they're not giving us insights because that requires human effort. And I just really love that because I was talking to a sophisticated marketing team at a large organization.

Travis McAshan [00:20:12]:
I think they're, you know, upwards of a million dollar in total gross revenue. So they obviously have something to lose by not doing it right. And, you know, I was talking to them about data and they're like, we have unlimited data sources. You know, we have all kinds of reports coming in from all different folks, vendor partners, you know, internal. And when I asked them, okay, well, how do you, how can you attribute lead generation from your marketing website? Because they have a multi channel approach and they had no real clear answer to that. And so, you know, yeah, so they were over here saying on one side they were saying, we have a lot of data, but then on the other side they're saying, well, we don't know very basic kind of details. And I think one of the things you mentioned also in your book is just that there are different platforms that these users are jumping through. So I think that a strategic approach that is user centered and based on data would be the absolute gold standard.

Travis McAshan [00:21:07]:
Right. And iterated over time. And I think that I spent a lot of time last year researching how to create a robust analytics measurement framework for our continuous improvement clients. So one of the things we found that with larger marketing teams, having a fractional web dev team that is goal driven and making continuous strategic changes on an incremental basis becomes beloved and sticky. And so with a lot of our larger clients, you just have, they're like, wow, I didn't know I needed this, but this is life changing. I know that I can trust the team to execute on these strategic ideas. And so having a backlog, kind of like when you think about like application development and engineers, there's the agile process, right? So you have lean and agile. Lean is how do you get to market quicker.

Travis McAshan [00:21:57]:
Agile is how do you iterate data information in a feedback loop. And so just taking some of the principles from the development side of the business and applying that to marketing. Right. So you have a backlog, it's prioritized based on goal driven approach. Looking at your KPI's that kind of go through the funnel, you think about acquisition, engagement and conversion. I mean, the entire purpose of a marketing website is twofold. Exposure. Conversion.

Travis McAshan [00:22:29]:
Exposure to me is just the finite number of human beings that know you exist. Conversion is what is the qualified percentage of those that turn into paying customers or whatever, taking the next step. And so I think that the marketing website's job is, I think, primarily the force multiplier of conversion. And so just thinking about what happens when people arrive on the website. Yeah, you have all these marketing channels driving all this traffic, you know, to the site, that's exposure. But, you know, I think the backlog from a continuous improvement perspective, like the incremental change, is really about how do we optimize for conversion. And so, you know, those are just two mathematical numbers, you know, the finite number of human beings that visit your website and the percentage of those people that turn into customers. And so whatever incremental change plan you have should address that.

Travis McAshan [00:23:15]:
Basic mathematic.

Brandi Starr [00:23:18]:
No, that makes sense. And so my last question is a little bit of, I don't know what I don't know. And so is there anything that I have not thought to ask about that you feel important to share with our listeners around? You know, how they get the most out of their website, how they're able to show the ROI to, can continue to make those changes. Like this is sort of your open ended. What else would you like to share with us that I may not have thought to ask about?

Travis McAshan [00:23:52]:
Wow, that's such a great question. I mean, marketing leaders, I think, are just inundated right now with just everything that's happening and changing in the marketplace. I mean, AI is, I mean, I think Sam Altman came out and said chat GPT version five is going to render marketing firms obsolete or something like that, you know, or like, you know. Yeah, very presumptuous, bold statement. You know, I don't agree with it, but I mean, there's a lot of truth, right? I mean, I even read a study that jobs posted on Fiverr is down like something like 20 or 30%. So, you know, there's just less people looking for those types of roles and needs. But the thoughtful, strategic approach that's goal driven and user centered is not something that will be easily replaced. And so I think that this is a commitment and just kind of thinking about this approach.

Travis McAshan [00:24:47]:
Don't redesign your website. Instead, make frequent incremental changes. If you must redesign your website, do it, focusing on usability function over form. Although what I've learned is that it's impossible to extract the two, I think that most marketing leaders, they want a site that looks great and works great, you know, ultimately, and you cannot disconnect those two, no matter how smart and sophisticated a market team. I don't care if I have twelve people on the call at every, you know, level of a marketing team. At some point we're talking about the color of a button for like 15 minutes, you know, or, you know, like, it's just, you know, sometimes I have to stop and just be like, you know what, it's impossible to extract the to. And so I think that if you can become a marketer who starts to turn the ship, and I mean, again, I keep referring back to your book, but it's true, like, you know, your premise for this book, seamless customer experience equals revenue growth. You know, that's, that's what, that's my takeaway.

Travis McAshan [00:25:52]:
And, you know, I think that that doesn't really change with website design. It's like if you can be a marketer that's focused on the user and the user's needs, you say this over and over in your book. Your refrain is customer success is business success. What works for the customer, works for the company. It's all about being user centered. I think that ultimately the most important job of marketing leader would be to turn the organization around in a way that focuses on user needs and then looks at the data that will then turn the dial for that as well. Because as much as people say they do. Most activities are around activities and not about results.

Travis McAshan [00:26:31]:
And I think that is a, you know, one of the challenges is that, you know, we're sending the newsletter, you know, we're doing the outbound, you know, we're doing the content marketing. We're doing a lot of the activities that marketing is supposed to do, but you need to have a plan that's strategic. You need to use the plan, and then you need to measure the plan after it's done. And I think that it's just difficult to stay the course through that whole process because of all the things that you have going on in the given day and a given week. But if you can. If you can be in that elite percentage of people that can create the plan, use the plan and stick with the plan, you're going to see massive results. And it's just really fun to see when we work with organizations that think this way and, you know, you're looking at multiples of, you know, three, five, x, increase in growth, and just really exciting results over time.

Brandi Starr [00:27:25]:
Yeah, that stick with the plan part is definitely the hard part. And you have shifting organizational priorities, turnover, all of the things that are happening and, yeah, that, especially with any sort of long term initiative, the sticking with the plan can be the really hard part. Travis, talking about our challenges is just the first step, and nothing changes if nothing changes. And so, in traditional therapy, the therapist gives the client some homework. But here at revenue rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. So I would love to hear your one thing. For those listening who, you know, have what you've said has resonated with them, what is that first action that they should take?

Travis McAshan [00:28:16]:
So one thing is just like the crucible moment, because now I gotta, like, I have all these ideas in my head that I want to share, and I can't share them all. It's not fair. I would say if you are a person who has just completed a website redesign, brandy, yourself included, I think that if you're not running a split test on your website, you're losing money, you're losing opportunity, and you're reducing the ROI of the effort. And if I had access and permission from the right people, I could probably set up a split test that would make meaningful, that could potentially make meaningful change in a couple of hours. Now, obviously, I'm not user centered. I wasn't a part of the process. You know, your users, you went through a process that's very user centered, but just testing your primary calls to action in a couple of headers above the fold on key landing pages. Using visual website optimizer, you can run a test.

Travis McAshan [00:29:16]:
And if you have enough traffic, you'll be able to see results in five to ten days. You would be shocked at how quickly you can create results. The neat thing about conversion rate improvement is if you double your conversion rate, yes, your variable costs will go up because you're delivering more services, but your hard costs stay the same. So your profit can quadruple if you double your conversion rate. And so there's just a lot of opportunity being left on the table. And look, how hard is it to increase the traffic to your website by two x. If you have 100,000 visitors and you get to 200,000, that's a difficult thing to accomplish overnight. But to check your website conversion rate from 1% to 2% is just changing a couple of key potential things on the website.

Travis McAshan [00:30:01]:
Essentially, that is 100% increase in conversion. Well, we had a client one time where all we did was change their CTA, their primary CTA from book a demo to get started. And the traffic that was visiting the website increased to their conversion page by like 75%. Conversion rate from the form to conversion to new sales leads went up by 45%. And their sales team went from being under, you know, underutilized. They were not getting enough leads to getting too many leads they had hiring salespeople. That's just one, one small example. And you said one thing.

Travis McAshan [00:30:36]:
But just to go back above to the people that are thinking about a redesign, or, and, or are in a redesign now, if I had to give them one piece of advice, it would be go install hotchargest or clarity or crazy egg, any tool that gives you behavioral analysis of real people using your website. And if you are thankful and lucky enough to work with a web design agency, or you have in house resources that are doing a very user centered approach involving real people in the beginning, middle and the end of the project. Kudos. Most people aren't. But I just think that if you could just watch people use your website, I mean, you could literally just watch ten to 15, one to three minute videos and your mind will be opened, you know, because the way that you thought people were using your website is different than the way they're using it. It's guaranteed. And the other thing too, is if you look at analytics, it's anonymized and it's like 30,000 foot view, you know? Okay. Oh, yeah.

Travis McAshan [00:31:36]:
These are our top five visited pages. These are our top landing pages. And our top exit pages and our bounce rate and our conversion rate. But watching a video of a person using your site and seeing where they scroll and how fast they click and how they don't read any of the stuff you spend a lot of time writing, it's just eye opening. And it just shocks me that most people don't do this. And I think that because it is so incredibly easy. So ultimately, watching videos post launch is good too, because you can see all those assumptions you made and how they're panning out. But again, I would say post launch doing split testing would be the best way to recoup ROI from all of that effort pre launch.

Travis McAshan [00:32:20]:
Looking at how people actually use your site can inform you to make better decisions so that when it goes out into the world, it's higher performing.

Brandi Starr [00:32:28]:
I love that. I love that. Well, thank you so much, Travis. I have truly enjoyed our discussion, but that's our time for today. But before we go, tell us how can our audience connect with you and definitely give the shameless plug for what glide does?

Travis McAshan [00:32:45]:
Awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you for this time. It's been a pleasure. I've really enjoyed getting to know you and read your book and your partner's books. It's just wonderful to see what you guys are doing. But yeah. So the best way to find me would be to go to our website, glide design.com.

Travis McAshan [00:33:01]:
it's g as in girl Dash dash design.com dot. And I'm also on LinkedIn. If someone wants to reach out to me personally, those would be the best two channels. And at Glide, we deeply love what we do, which is that we plan, design and build custom marketing websites that are beautiful, useful and produce lasting value.

Brandi Starr [00:33:23]:
Awesome. Well, we will make sure to link to both Glide's website as well as your LinkedIn. So wherever you are listening or watching this podcast, check the show notes so that you can connect with Travis. Well, again, Travis, thank you so, so much. I have learned some things. I have some action items that I will be messaging my team right after we get off this call so that we can continue to make those incremental and frequent changes to help to continue to optimize.

Travis McAshan [00:33:55]:
Awesome. Thank you so much, Brandi.

Brandi Starr [00:33:57]:
You are welcome and thanks everyone for joining me. I hope you have enjoyed my conversation with Travis. I can't believe we're at the end. Until next time, bye bye.

Travis McAshan Profile Photo

Travis McAshan

CEO

Travis McAshan is the Founder and CEO of GLIDE, an award-winning, purpose-led digital creative agency based in Austin, Texas. With nearly 20 years of experience, Travis and his team are dedicated to creating beautiful, functional, and high-performing online experiences for startups, nonprofits, and beloved brands that share a passion for making a positive impact in the world.

GLIDE is more than just a job; it's a mission-driven company that works collaboratively with its clients to make the world a better place. As a values-based organization, GLIDE deeply cares about its clients and team members, believing that this approach leads to the most significant contribution to the collective good.