CRO: Why it is Important and What to Expect in 2020 with Justin Christianson

Welcome to the podcast. I am Shane Barker, your host of Shane Barker’s Marketing Madness Podcast.

Today, I’m with Justin Christensen, the co-founder and president of Conversion Fanatics. His company helps other businesses with conversion rate optimization and traffic generation. Listen to him as he discusses the importance of conversion rate optimization for businesses. In this episode, he also talks about A/B testing and what you can expect from CRO in 2020.

Well, cool. Let’s jump into this. So, have you already sent over some of the questions and stuff? It’s a pretty basic interview.

No worries. Like I said, I’m not here to try to make you say anything funny—it’s all the stuff that you guys currently do. I don’t think there’ll be any issue, so I’m excited.

Nice. There we go. I like that.

Really? So you’re at the 300 mark; I think I’ve been on about 40 or 50, and I was pretty proud of that. So you’re jumping the 300 mark, huh?

Let me just talk about that. Was that mainly for just thought leadership, like conversion, like client stuff, or what was the benefit for you? And what did you see out of that?

There we go.

Yeah, that. And then it’s hard to find for you guys. Obviously, being in optimization, you want to find out—did it work, right? And I’m spending whatever 10 grand, and what did I get out of that other than some people saying they heard me? I get that.

And I think overall, you get the exposure side of things. But it’s like, how does that work? For you, you want to know the numbers, right? I mean, that’s really what it comes down to. That’s great to say we had this happen—you say, “Oh, that’s awesome.” But how many people bought my book? Or how many more clients do we get because of that?

And that’s always a little more difficult to do. I would say with podcasts it is, for sure. But yeah, cool.

This is going to be a good interview. I’m excited about this. So the goal today is to talk about how to improve your conversion optimization skills with Conversion Fanatics, Justin. So here we are. What I wanted to start off with—and I do this in all the podcasts—is just: where did you grow up? Just give us a little background on where you grew up and your family size, all the fun stuff.

That’s awesome. I have a question. So, on the affiliate side of things—on my side, we do about 160 to 180 uniques a month in traffic. It’s a good amount. We’ve built it up in the last year and a half. We usually did it for everybody else and not for ourselves. We’re not bad at conversion stuff, but we’re not like your company when it comes to affiliate work. We’ve actually wanted to jump into more affiliate initiatives. Do you have any recommendations for anybody who might want to jump in?

I have a lot of articles that index well—getting anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 people a month. We really haven’t optimized them for affiliate-based content, even though we rank extremely well on Google for hundreds of keywords. I’m just curious: do you have any recommendations, or is it like—I guess what I’m asking is I’m looking for somebody down the road to help us with the affiliate side. I know there’s some stuff where there are hundreds of thousands of dollars involved, and there could be some good residual revenue. I get pitched 10 times a week on joining an affiliate program because people see the traffic and obviously want to jump on that.

Yeah, that’d be awesome, and I’d appreciate that. I just know that we’re leaving money on the table, and there can be some really cool stuff. I look at these pages and think, “Man, we really got to get into this.” But you know how it is—you’ve got 10,000 other things going on, working on a course, a book, and all the other fun stuff. Where do you spend your time? I do feel like there’s some good stuff there, so any kind of introduction would be awesome.

Let’s go back to your childhood. Tell us a little bit—any interesting facts growing up? Was there anything kind of crazy, aside from wanting to become an electrician and then, after about 80 hours, realizing, “God, there’s got to be a better way.”

I think I remember hearing that—okay, that’s right—a bull rider. So I get it. You were a bit of a country guy, and you did bull riding, huh? How was that?

I’ve got a question for you. Did you ever see the movie? Who was it? Was it Seven Seconds? I think it was a rodeo.

Yeah. Eight Seconds with…

Yeah, did that. Now, you gotta tell me, from a rodeo perspective—I don’t think I ever saw the movie—but when it came out, did it make you cringe? Did you go, “That’s not what it’s like,” or do you think they did a good job? Was it pretty good?

Nice. So it was a good movie—it kind of fit the lifestyle. I mean, if I were to watch it, then I would see that this is kind of what it would be like, right?

That’s awesome. Okay, I was just kind of curious about that. I don’t know why—that obviously wasn’t anything I thought about asking. But the bull riding thing is awesome, man—that’s kind of cool. 500—so how’d you get hurt? I mean, obviously, you know how you got hurt. You know, the bull decided…

Oh, God, that’s crazy.

I love that you’re, other than that, it’s pretty straightforward. I mean, aside from cracking my face, breaking both my legs, and having my arm cut off, it was just another Saturday, you know?

I would imagine that I’d much rather be on the back than taking one in the eyes and saying, “Hey man, let’s try to work this out somehow. Let’s not get violent.” And we’re talking about this. So you’re currently living in Austin—how long have you been in Austin?

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And did you end up going to college or no?

So you said traveling musician. So what did you play?

The whole thing out there, touring, huh?. That’s funny, man—I love it, man.

Every once in a while you get a guess. It’s just like, how old are you, if I can ask you?

Okay, so you’re sneaking up in your front—I’m 44—so it’s funny when I talk to people, like, they’ll say, “What have you done?” or stuff, and I forget things. Like, I’m like, “Oh, I did this, this, this,” oh yeah, oh yeah—and I forgot. And I teach at UCLA, and they’re like, “How do you forget that you taught at UCLA?” And I’m like, “Well, just because, in the midst of everything, there’s so much stuff.”

And I try to put it like, Shane, one point now is like, “Oh, these were my hospitality years. This was 16 to whatever, 25,” and then try to break it up for people. Because, I mean, you get older—you’re sneaking in your 40s. You’re not old by any means, but it’s just crazy. Like, you’re like, “Oh yeah, no solution. Two rows and a band, and then, oh hey, I used to ride bulls, and hey, I built a helicopter when I was seven years old.” You kind of forget some of this stuff. You look at all the different things. It’s kind of cool when you talk about it. I mean, like, “I kind of forgot about that. “That was fun.

Yeah. And, I mean, I look back—it was 20 years ago I graduated high school—and you’re like, “What the heck, isn’t that crazy?”

I always joke around about this. I have 25 years of experience in the digital space. The reason I bring that up is, as I’ve talked about before on the podcast, my wife once walked by while I was telling somebody, “I’ve been doing digital merch for 15 years.” I was all done and walked out. My wife was like, “Why are you lying to people?” I said, “What do you mean? I haven’t lied to anybody.” She goes, “You’ve been doing this for how long? How old are you?” I’m like, “I’m 44. When did you start?” And I said, “I think I was 17.” She goes, “Or 18. Will you do the math?” And I’m like, “I’m not good at math. I’m better at marketing.” So I did the numbers, and I was like, “Oh, geez, okay—the 25 years, I guess.” I was doing this marketing thing when the internet was around—not really, but it feels like that. It’s kind of crazy. Time just flies, man.

Yeah, crazy, man. I don’t—I remember thinking, “This isn’t new with marketing.” I remember as a youngster, when people were 40, I thought, “God, they’re almost dead.” I remember thinking that when people said 40, I was like, “Oh, God, they’re not gonna make it. We’re gonna have to talk to Uncle Larry, because he’s not gonna be around much longer.” And now I’m 44 and I feel pretty healthy. I’ve got a few aches from CrossFit and my legs get numb from running, but other than that, I’m not breaking—and I haven’t had a bull attack me or ridden 500 bulls or anything like that. But it’s kind of interesting when you reach a certain age.

So, how did you jump into the marketing space? I mean, obviously you’re an electrical engineer doing that kind of stuff—making money with affiliate marketing—and then you jumped into marketing. How was that transition?

Yeah, there’s nobody talking about that. There’s nobody writing on their blog about how to be successful. At the end of the day, you’ve got to figure that out.

All the fun stuff. I even like the name—Conversion Fanatics is awesome. I know you guys probably got that domain name a long, long time ago, but that’s an awesome name.

I used to buy tons of domain names, and I’d love to tell you that I sold them for millions, which I never did. My wife was always like, “Why do you have 500 domain names?” And I’m like, “Because I’m gonna develop or sell them.” Every year we’d have that conversation after I was spending five grand a year on domain names. So I’m always like, when you find a good domain name, or when I see somebody with a good domain name, I like to give them kudos because I know it’s not easy to do. That’s awesome. I like that name, for sure. I think we got lucky. Yeah, that’s a good one, that’s a good one.

So what would you—obviously, you guys work with a lot of high-end clients and stuff. When it comes to boosting a client’s conversion rate, what are the things? I mean, there’s certain things you guys look at other than traffic. There are some things we looked at on your site, like the basics: at least 30,000 in traffic a month, or at least 300 leads, or at least a million dollars in revenue—that kind of thing. And obviously the no-asshole policy, which I think is the most important part of the policies. But are there certain things you guys look at in regards to conversions and stuff? Other than that, what would be the first thing if you were to look at a potential client? What are the things you look at?

Well, I think this was awesome. What you touched on is that really, this is difficult for a lot of people to understand. It’s not what you like—it’s what your customer likes. What I mean by that is, from an SEO perspective, people say, “These are the keywords,” and I’m like, “Yeah, but if nobody’s looking for that keyword, who cares?” You might think you should have a green button here or whatever, but I’d say a red button, because that’s not the number one thing people are looking for. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you think—it’s what the customer thinks. It’s about the customer’s journey and how they go through it. And that’s one of the most difficult parts: people don’t think from the customer’s perspective. If you look at a website and there are 15 different steps to get to the checkout page, that’s a problem. The more steps there are, the more likely you’ll have a drop-off of 5%, 7%, or 8% at each step, and by the end, only 1% of the people actually get to the end.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it’s, what’s interesting is that it really, you know, and most people don’t base it off of the data, right? They just base it off of feelings of emotions. And this is what I think, this is what I’ve read, or whatever. And it’s like, at the end of the day, who cares about any of that? Like, it really comes down to, like, what’s going to convert and I think people, you know, get the idea of AB testing, but I don’t think they really understand what goes into that. Like, I mean, the amount of work that goes into that, like, it’s extreme. I mean, obviously, if you AB test enough, mute it down to you have a working funnel. Like, life is phenomenal, but to get to that point, it just, it’s a lot of time. I mean, people have their what, most people don’t put up websites with intent. We don’t know what I mean the same. It’s like they put websites up just because they want to. They need to put a website up. It’s informational, but they don’t really think about that journey, or they don’t think about keywords. They don’t think about any of that stuff. And so that’s when I think, when you and that’s where you know, like, once again, when you guys said, Hey, we love our clients, but we’re very picky. I think you guys are at an awesome point where it gets to that, where you just look at it and you go, go, this is going to be a good fit. You’ll know instantly, or no, this isn’t going to be a good fit because they have a good budget. But we’re going to redo, redo everything like this is not even like this is they’re going to think this thing is awesome, and they’re 80% there. We’re looking at it going, you guys are like 5% there, if that.

I don’t think they realize all the moving pieces and how they tie together. The moment you tweak one thing, it can affect another. Optimization is ongoing. We also deal with a bit of SEO because people think, “Once I get number one for these keywords, I’m good.” And yes, you can stay in that number one spot, but you want to continue growing because someone else is going to come and try to take that number one, two, or three spot. Same with optimization—this thing is constantly evolving.

Do you guys have your own websites, like e-commerce type stuff? I mean, do you guys mainly work with e-commerce businesses? Let me ask you that first.

And then, do you guys have any of your own sites—any of your own e-commerce sites that you currently run?

Nice. Well, you know, the reason I’m asking is that for me, I always look at this: we do this for clients—we do SEO and everything’s great—and then all of a sudden they’re like, “Hey, we want to stop doing this,” and I go, “God, man.” So you get to a point where I was like, why don’t I just start building my own sites? I know what I can do from an SEO perspective, get those indexed, sell leads, or do whatever that is. But I think it comes down to this: you help all these other companies with conversion-based stuff, and you’re great at doing that, and then there’s a certain point where it’s like, maybe I need to do this for myself as well, you know—start building that e-commerce side. I know I’ve talked about doing more e-commerce stuff or something like that, but in regards to what you guys do, I mean, I can get somebody number one for any keyword, obviously depending on budget, competitiveness, and all that fun stuff. But I think for you guys, it’s kind of cool: you’re now taking on a side project and doing your own stuff.

So how did that work? It’s funny—the reason I’m asking is that one of my big things, probably in 2021, was that I really wanted to buy online businesses. I’d look at them and think, “Okay, they’re doing this, but they could double or triple their results.” Instead of just offering my services, I figured, why not offer a partnership? Is that kind of what you guys did in this situation?

Yeah, all the crazies come out in a good way. Well, that’s cool—if you want to have some of the companies be candidates, we’ll put it in the show notes as well, if you guys want to.

Yeah, no worries, no worries at all.

Dude, I’m telling you, that’s why I was asking you—that’s why that question came up. Because for me, I look at it and I go, “Man, we’re doing all this good stuff.” And it’s like, you know what? I’m literally like, Empire Flippers as an example—I’ve been listening to their podcast, and I’m gonna start looking at these businesses. And great, you want 40,000 for your business? I know that I can double or triple that, I’ll come in and buy your business. And I’m looking at that—I’m even tempted to put something on my website saying, “Hey, people, I’ll buy your business.” And of course, I don’t necessarily want 10,000 inquiries about buying my drop shipping business out of China, but you know—the right type of thing could make sense.

So, I don’t know, I’m intrigued by that, because as you talked about—it can take you six months, eight months, a year to get a business up and going. And I’m like, I would much rather spend whatever—30, 40, 50,000—just to buy the business and either move them out of the way or partner up, whatever that may be, and then let us do our work. Because I find that a lot of times with clients—and God bless my clients, they’re all awesome for the most part—it’s like, you get to a point where you’re trying to tell them what to do, and they’re like, “Oh, we want to do it a little differently.” And it’s like, okay, but you hired me, right? I want to make sure we’re on the same page. If you know what to do, then why are you asking me? You wouldn’t be asking me if you knew what to do. Let’s just be honest: I understand how to do this, so if you don’t want to believe and implement what I’m saying, then what’s the point? Why are we going to move forward?

And that’s kind of like—and that’s where I know you said you’re kind of picky about your clients. We’re the same way. I want people that get it—”Hey, listen, I understand that I’m gonna have to let someone give you the reins for the most part.” You can approve some stuff at the end of the day, let us do our thing. I can show you plenty of case studies and things we’ve done where things were successful, but you got to let it run a little bit. If you’re just gonna micromanage and make the approval process terrible, then what’s the point?

And it’s just divide and conquer. I mean, really, if that’s what you guys are good at and you suck at marketing, guess what? Find a marketing company, because it makes sense. I mean, people worry about a 50/50 split. I’m like, “What is 100% of what you’re currently making?” Let’s do the math on that. Listen, I get you’re giving up 50%, but where are you at right now? Obviously, you’re not doing phenomenal—you wouldn’t be talking about this if you were making all kinds of money. You’d hire somebody to count it; you’d be on a golf course. If you’re a little stressed out about something here, like we are, well, you do this. So why not talk about some kind of merger? That’s awesome. I know we can’t talk about it now, but maybe down the road, you’ll give us an update on that. I’d love to help with anything I can. Man, I love seeing that kind of stuff go.

And that’s the deal. I think that is important because once you’re getting hit in the head every single day with stuff, you do need projects that shake things up. I’ll do that with my team every six months—actually, that’s probably a lie; it’s probably every month I have a new idea of something we should do. And they’re like, “You know what? You’re crazy.” But I’m like, with what we’ve got going on here, I want to change it up and do something different. It has to be that way because if not, it’s just doing the same thing over and over. I could never work in a factory doing the same thing every single day; I’d just shoot myself or cut my fingers off or something—that would drive me nuts. I enjoy it. What I love about marketing is there’s always something new, something interesting, and cool stuff. That’s why I enjoy the space so much. And when it comes to conversion-based stuff, I’m sure, like I said, when you start getting those results and seeing some cool things, when you start doing it for yourself, you’re like, “Okay, now this is awesome because, once again…”

That makes sense. So what are some of your favorite optimization tools—like conversion optimization tools? I know you guys use VWO, I think you mentioned that. But anyway, tell us about some of the tools you like to use. Are there any tools that are your favorites?

Nice, nice, nice, nice. So what do you see? You’ve been doing this for a long time—do you see any crazy changes in CRO in 2020? That’s what I love about what you’re talking about: there’s always new software and new developments. But you guys keep it down to the basics, right? It comes down to analytics, conversions, A/B testing tools, and then you see how it all comes together. Is there anything different in 2020 that might change things? Like, is it voice, or anything else interesting?

Yeah, no, that makes sense. I mean, I think, you know, people get nervous thinking, “If you don’t convert them today, you’re going to lose them.” So we have to give them a discount to hurry them up. And I do think that, depending on your product or service, it can be a longer process. Especially these days with reviews and all the different factors that tie into this—people want to feel like they’re educated on making the right decision.

Or you can’t. I mean, that’s the thing—is, like, what do you do? Just offer a deeper discount. You can. You’re not gonna give me full price—at that point, you’ve already blown it, right? I’m not saying it’s blown, but it’s like, at this point, they’re like, “Okay, we’ll shoot after one day.” For me, I’m a little bit evil—if you give me a 10% discount after one day, I’m just gonna keep waiting because I know you’re gonna hit me with a 15% and maybe a 20%, right? Or, I mean, what? I’m really bad at—and this is terrible, I’m gonna admit this—but when I’m going to buy something, and if there’s a little thing that says coupon code, that means there’s a coupon code on the internet. Oh God, I’ll spend an hour to go save seven bucks just to, you know… Most people don’t do that, and you shouldn’t do that. If you’re listening to this podcast and you’re young, don’t do that. That’s rude. That’s not the way to do it. But that’s what we do.

Yeah, we’ve done a lot of bundling. We’ll say, “Hey, you want that discount? So great.” With fitness products or ebooks, there’s no extra cost for us to give them one or two ebooks. We bundle a lot of stuff too—like, you pay $20 for this, or we’ll give you a 20% discount if you buy two. That incentivizes them to buy two without costing us any extra money; it just increases the amount they’re spending or improves our acquisition cost.

Yeah, just go all in.

Yeah, who cares? So tell me a little bit. You wrote a book, right? Conversion Fanatics: How to Double Your Customer Sales and Profits with A/B Testing. When did you write that book? Just a few years ago, huh?

That’s awesome, and congrats on that. I know that’s my goal in 2020—to get a book out. But I ran into the same thing. I’m big in the influencer space, do a lot of influencer-type stuff and speaking engagements, but the hardest part is writing a book. I want to write something that’s evergreen. As an influencer, I don’t want to talk about Instagram—because Instagram could be gone in two years, you know? You get my point: write about something where this overall, arching influence has been there from day one. It’s involved a little bit, but these are the main concepts that haven’t changed regarding followers and stuff. So anyways, I’m kind of intrigued by that. I mean, off to read your book. Sounds like, if it’s only 150 pages, that’s right down my alley—anything over 151 pages is difficult for me, but 150 is the mark for me.

That’s awesome. Awesome. So cool. We’re getting to the end of this thing. I have a question. So, if you were—you said you’re gonna be 39, or you are 39?

Just 39. So if you had a chance to go back in time and tell 18-year-old Justin something, what would you say? What would be the first thing you’d say—maybe, “Hey, dude, don’t get on that bull” or something like that? Would you tell yourself, “You should do this differently,” or “Don’t do this,” or would you just say, “Enjoy the journey you’ve taken”?

Yeah, no, I know how that goes. I hate that I used to—and I still do—write down ideas, and then somebody would go and do something, and I’d show my wife, like, “I wrote that three years ago.” She’d be like, “Oh, that sounds good; I wish I would have done some of that.” There’s always those moments. I don’t really have any regrets—I think my path was my path, and that’s just the way it goes. But there are a few things I would do a little differently, just little tweaks you learn through experience and knowledge.

So, since you’ve had a very colorful background with all the different stuff you’ve done—like the rodeo side of things and everything else—who are three people, dead or alive, that you would want to have dinner with? Who are the people you’d love to have dinner with?

I mean, it’s like, any musicians, anybody like that? Or is there anybody, like, you know, like a rodeo star? I mean, is there a somebody ex-president? Is there, you know.

Yeah, no worries. No worries at all. And then here goes my last question of the day—actually, I got one other question. Actually, the limits live two questions. So my last question, or my second last question, is going to be: if you had $100 million—no, let’s say 10 million. I don’t know, why 100 million? 100 million is a lot. If I gave you a ten million lottery ticket, what would you do with the money?

Nice. I do—well, that’s funny. I do real estate. I flip properties. That’s one of the things—I jumped into it just in the last year or two because I used to do it a long time ago. So it’s kind of like, anyways, it’s fun. I enjoy the hustle of it, getting deals and stuff—kind of like marketing, but a little different. Yep. Well, cool. Justin, this has been awesome, man. I thank you so much for taking the time today. If anybody wants to get in contact with you through your social media, through your website, come on, give us some of the fun stuff.

That’s awesome. Well, good deal, Justin. Once again, man, thank you so much for taking the time today. Have an awesome rest of your day. And you guys, if you’re listening to the podcast for the first time, don’t forget to download and subscribe. Justin, have an awesome day, my friend.