Despite their overwhelmingly bad reputation, popups are a useful tool, but high conversion potential is inte worth sacrificing user experience. Luckily, with the right WordPress popup plugins, you can leverage the high-conversion potential of popups without driving users away.)

(mer …)

Global software giant SAP has announced a new Commerce Cloud composable offering, providing merchants new levels of flexibility and a range of choices between the complete Commerce Cloud package and specific applications and services. SAP is also announcing new headless composable storefronts for verticals including financial services, travel, telecommunications and the public sector in addition to its existing offerings for retail, consumer products, distribution and manufacturing.

SAP is also highlighting its partnership program for Commerce Cloud, including Contentful for content creation, Coveo for AI-driven product recommendations and Akeneo for PIM and product experience management.

Varför vi bryr oss. This is a new stage on the SAP commerce journey which began essentially with the acquisition of ecommerce vendor Hybris ten years ago. Hybris became SAP Hybris and then evolved into SAP Commerce Cloud, part of a broader CX suite.

The new initiative reflects a growing trend towards composability in the digital experience and commerce space as businesses with different levels of digital maturity, different products and services, and an ever-diversifying range of channels in which to meet customers, are seeing the limitations of being locked into traditional, all-in-one solutions.

A federated approach to offering services, combined with large partner networks, is bringing much greater flexibility to commerce offerings.

Gräv djupare: Sitecore adds new products to its composable DXP

All-in-one versus composable. Comprehensive buy-in to Commerce Cloud secures a wide range of services including order management, PIM, content management, personalization and engagement tools. Not every business needs all of these services from their commerce provider of choice — or not all of them at the same time.

By choosing among SAP and partner applications served on the Commerce Cloud platform, SAP customers can create their own agile, highly customized commerce solutions.

SAP is also flagging these announcements as reaffirming its commitment to the digital commerce and CX categories.

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Transcript:  

Laura Dolan:

Welcome listeners to the Optimizely podcast. I am Laura Dolan, your host, and today we are joined by Stephanie Nivinskus. She is the CEO of SizzleForce Marketing. Welcome, Stephanie. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Aw, thank you. I am delighted to be here.

Laura Dolan:

I just want to mention really quick, I see you live in San Diego, which is where I grew up. Is that where you grew up as well?

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Actually, I grew up in the Bay Area, but like most people that live in Northern California, we all migrate south, so.

Laura Dolan:

That’s awesome. Well, cool. Glad to talk to a fellow San Diegan. It’s been years since I’ve lived there, but it is just nice to talk to a little piece of home, so that’s really cool. I’ve been really excited to talk to you for a while now, because I know what we’re going to discuss today is really invaluable for marketers, and that is essentially how to improve and increase your website conversions. But first I just wanted you to tell us a little bit about your background and your history with SizzleForce. How long has the company been around and how did you get it started?

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Yeah, SizzleForce started in 2009, and I have been in marketing since 1995.

Laura Dolan:

Wow.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

So I started the company really because I saw a hole in the marketplace where there were a lot of companies out there that were spending massive amounts of money and doing all kinds of great stuff. And then there were a lot of small businesses that wanted to do great stuff, but didn’t know how to do so with the staffing and budget that they had available. And so I just, I’ve always had a heart kind of, if you want to say, for the underdog, and wanting to bring the big powerful things that I know can work and make them work for the smaller business owners.

Laura Dolan:

Awesome. And how big is your company now?

Stephanie Nivinskus:

So now we have seven people on staff, and we are working with lots and lots of clients. It’s growing.

Laura Dolan:

That’s awesome. I was also reading through your website ahead of our conversation today, and I noticed you used the term fractional CMO in a few places. And I would just like to know what is a fractional CMO?

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Yeah. It is a term that has become more trendy lately, even though it’s not a new position. It actually is an executive level marketing expert who works with companies on a part-time basis, and usually the responsibilities of a fractional CMO are fourfold. The first thing is we’re responsible for creating the overall marketing strategy. We’re also responsible for identifying the tactics that need to be implemented to bring the strategy to life, and then optimizing performance of the tactics along the way, as well as coordinating and overseeing the day-to-day activities of the implementation team.

Laura Dolan:

Nice. So it’s basically being a one-person show.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

It’s being the head of the one-person show and making sure that the team that’s implementing the day-to-day activities has all of the strategy, all of the support and every opportunity possible to be successful with what they’re implementing, whether it be social media or email marketing or website stuff, or whatever it is. That they have a captain of this ship, if you want to say.

Laura Dolan:

Exactly. That’s awesome. Would you consider yourself a fractional CMO at this point?

Stephanie Nivinskus:

I am a fractional CMO, yes.

Laura Dolan:

Awesome. Cool. Well, let’s dive right in by identifying what you think marketers are doing wrong on their websites right now. What is preventing customers from converting?

Stephanie Nivinskus:

I think there are several things. One of the most important things that I see every single day is unclear messaging. People are so close to their businesses, they’re so close to what they do every day that it’s very, very difficult for them to see things from a consumer standpoint. So they use marketing messages that are full of industry jargon and things that they think are clever and cute, but they’re not clear, and it really is a problem. The messaging isn’t clear, and so they’re not getting the conversions that they want. Another thing that I see all the time is that there isn’t a clear process of guiding website visitors toward making deliberate decisions, right? People are visiting websites and they might click here or there, but it’s kind of random. There’s no real strategy or plan to get them to click on what we really want them to click on so that they take the options we really want them to take.

Laura Dolan:

Right. So it’s they’re not providing that clear navigational path for them.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Right. They just throw up a bunch of random things and they’re like, “Well, hopefully they find what they’re looking for.” And instead of really guiding them through a step-by-step journey. Another thing I see all the time is companies are not acknowledging the pain points that their prospects have, and that’s a huge thing. Sometimes I hear people say, “Gosh, we don’t want to be negative. We don’t want to talk about all the bad stuff.” But I stand on the other side of that coin because really people take action when they have pain. When you break your arm, you take action and get it in a cast.

Laura Dolan:

Right.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

And everybody has pain. Pain is what motivates us to change something. And so if we pretend the pain isn’t there and we don’t acknowledge it, and we don’t agitate it at all, then people don’t really feel the pain, and they don’t really take the steps to change anything.

Laura Dolan:

There’s no initiative, and they don’t feel the need to be proactive at that point.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Right. Right. And then another thing that really impacts conversions that is not done frequently is people are not identifying really how they’re different or better than the competition that’s out there. They look like everybody else. A lot of people play it real safe.

Laura Dolan:

It’s true. Yeah.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Yeah. And I get it. I why they want to play it safe. They don’t want to rattle things, they don’t want to offend anybody. They don’t, none of that stuff. But the bottom line is your prospects have a lot of choices in who they can give their money to. And if you want them to give their money to you, you need to tell them why they should.

Laura Dolan:

Do you think it’s also an issue of budgeting? Maybe companies can’t afford a website wire frame that sticks out, so they just basically invest in something that looks exactly the same as everyone else’s.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

I think that happens a lot, but I’m going to call the bluff on can’t afford it as much as won’t afford it or don’t understand why they need to afford it.

Laura Dolan:

Sure. Yep. Big difference.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Yeah, I think the money is probably there. It just needs to be reallocated. And when people understand, look, if you make this small investment in the grand scheme of things, if you invest $8,000, $10,000 in making your website rock, and as a result you’re making seven plus figures from it, well, that’s a pretty dang good ROI.

Laura Dolan:

Right. Definitely. So what do you think is the solution to those issues? So when it comes to content, what should marketers be putting out there right now to not just capture their attention, but make sure that the layout is conducive to what customers are looking for to meet those pain points?

Stephanie Nivinskus:

One thing that’s super important, I call it the big bold promise at the top of the website. When somebody goes to your website within just a couple of seconds, they need to know exactly what you sell, why they need to have it, and how to move forward if they want it. Right? It’s a very simple three-step process of creating a statement like that. But when you do that right from the beginning, you hook the website visitor in and they know immediately that they’re in the right place, which is going to lend to them spending more time on the site and scrolling and going to the next place. As opposed to landing there, seeing something that doesn’t really stick, doesn’t really hook them, doesn’t show them that you can immediately solve their problem, so they click away.

Laura Dolan:

So just don’t bury the lede. Right?

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Don’t bury it. Let people know they’re in the right place right away from the top.

Laura Dolan:

So then as far as leveraging content, how do you ensure that you stand apart? What channels should marketers be using right now in lieu of, let’s say, a wall of text with blogs that just has a CTA to the same place on the site? Do you have any recommendations in mind on how marketers can go a different direction or be more innovative in that space?

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Sure, sure. I’m still a massive fan of blogging. It works great still. You just don’t want to regurgitate the same content that’s already been shared thousands of times by everyone else, right?

Laura Dolan:

Yeah.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

You need to be different. In addition to that, however, huge fan of podcasts. When you host one, I love slicing and dicing podcast content and repurposing it in 10 different ways, into a blog, into a video, into social media posts, into LinkedIn newsletters, into lead magnets, even possibly writing a book from it, developing a course from it. There’s so many different things that can come just from podcasting. I wrote the content of my own book four years ago, and I have sliced and diced that baby and reused it in just about every way possible, and it has created incredible revenue growth for me as a result of the slicing and dicing.

Laura Dolan:

I love it. That’s a great idea.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Of course, another thing, short-form video is hot, has been for a while now, but when you’re doing reels, you’re doing TikTok, YouTube shorts, etc. That’s a place that you just need to be, and you need to be taking advantage of that right now, because that’s getting all the visibility.

Laura Dolan:

It is. Videos are hot right now.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

People have such short attention spans, so especially if video as a whole is wonderful, I feel like, because when somebody watches a video, it is possible for them to hear the tone in your voice, see the body language that you’re putting out there, listen to the wisdom that’s coming from your mouth, but it’s a more holistic experience of engaging with a brand as opposed to just reading text for a blog. Right?

Laura Dolan:

Exactly.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

And because their attention spans are so, so short, whenever we’re doing stuff like a 15 or even a seven-second reel, or a real short TikTok or YouTube shorts or whatnot, we’re feeding that desire for information, for education, for entertainment, but we’re doing it in these tiny bite size pieces that are making it super easy for people to digest and to digest on the go wherever they’re at. Right?

Laura Dolan:

Exactly. Yes, exactly. They don’t have to worry about having access. I mean, obviously, everybody’s on their phones now and everybody is making websites with responsive design. That is absolutely essential. ‘Cause people, they want to read on the go. If you want them to look at your website, make sure it’s conducive for mobile, because they’re looking at your videos, they’re reading your blogs, they’re listening to your podcasts, and like you said, making it digestible and more accessible that way, I’m sure makes a huge difference in your conversions.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

It sure does. Absolutely. Yeah. You want to meet people where they’re at, and we have to be very aware of the fact that everyone is being pulled in 10,000 different directions. Most people that own businesses have some form of ADD, I think, right?

Laura Dolan:

Yes.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

And whether diagnosed or undiagnosed, just our attentions spans are shot. So what can we do to provide them with the content that’s really going to hook them in and intrigue them and showcase our authority and our credibility, but also do it in bite size pieces so that people don’t have to spend a half an hour or an hour doing something, they can do it, literally, they can get some value from something in 15 seconds.

Laura Dolan:

Absolutely. And I also want to circle back to repurposing content. I’m such a huge advocate of working smarter, not harder. So if you have, like you said, a podcast you can repurpose as clips on social media or a book that you could splice into something smaller like an ebook or a white paper or a blog series on your site and already have that content there and just kind of building up from there. That’s such a smart way to market right now, especially if you are working on a budget or you are working with a smaller team. The possibilities are endless when you can be that innovative and just look at what you already have.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

And the thing that’s funny is that I think most companies already have a ton of content. They just haven’t compiled it all in one place and thought about how to slice and dice it properly.

Laura Dolan:

I went to Content Marketing World last week, and a few of the speakers gave us the same stats, that right now there’s about 4.6 billion blogs that exist online that were published just this year.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Wow.

Laura Dolan:

So there is so much information out there, and we just keep piling on and piling on and adding to it, and everybody’s having the same issue. Nobody’s converting, nobody’s clicking on this stuff. So what can we do differently? And I think this is something that more companies do need to explore. So as far as getting into the nitty gritty of conversions, what do you recommend as far as robust CTAs go? Are there any particular action verbs industries should be using right now in lieu of what’s already out there?

Stephanie Nivinskus:

I think there’s a couple of ways that we can look at this. One way is what we need to avoid and what we need to do more of. So when we think about what we need to avoid anything in a call to action that sounds like work, for example, download this or subscribe to this. Even though download, I mean, realistically it’s clicking a button. It’s not work, right?

Laura Dolan:

Right.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

However, the way the human brain works, it feels like you’re telling me I have to do something and now my to-do list that’s already 10 miles long, just got 10 miles longer. And so we want to avoid using words like “download” or “subscribe”. Instead, we want to use words that bring it back to what always matters in marketing, which is what’s in it for me as the prospect, right? What do your people really want? The CTA should give it to them. So for example, let’s say I owned a tax firm. A good CTA to test could be something along the lines of “Save thousands of dollars with these commonly overlooked deductions”. It tells me the benefit. I’m going to save thousands of dollars. It also peaks my curiosity because I mentioned that these are commonly overlooked deductions. So I’m like, “Huh, am I overlooking something? Am I actually giving more money to Uncle Sam than I need to? I should check this out and see.” Right?

Laura Dolan:

Exactly. It’s just, again, getting that pain point in there.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Yeah. I think it’s also really important to test adding verbiage that creates a sense of urgency. So, for example, adding the word “now”, adding the word “today”, adding the word “immediately” to a call to action can be really powerful. Get the surprising deductions list now. Save thousands of dollars today. Do you see how just adding that one word gives it a sense of urgency? And I’m like, “Oh, now I should do something now. Oh, okay. They want me to do something now. I’m going to click the button.” Right?

Laura Dolan:

Exactly. Also, giving them a deadline, too. You have till tonight to save 50% on this or something like that. Kind of also giving them that sense of FOMO as well.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

For sure, for sure. I always like to caution companies, definitely play into the FOMO, but only do it if it’s legitimate. There’s nothing that ticks people off faster than being told, you only have until this much time. And then they find out that deal never really expires. Right?

Laura Dolan:

Right, right.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

They just say that to everybody all the time. It immediately causes a break in their ability to trust you.

Laura Dolan:

Exactly, yes. You’ve got to maintain that trust. ‘Cause then so now you’re facing bad reviews.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

If you’re going to do it, awesome, do it. But make sure that when you say the deal is over, make sure the deal is really over. Another thing I think is so important with CTAs is don’t be afraid to have fun. Depending on your brand voice, you can use all kinds of different things. But kind of going back to this hypothetical example of someone that owns a tax firm, a fun CTA might be, “Show me the money!” Have some fun, add a little personality. Don’t just be like, “Get it now.” I think another thing that works super duper well is making CTAs affirmative. So your CTA button could say something like, “Yes, I want to pay less tax.”

Laura Dolan:

I like that. And then do you have an opinion on whether or not first person versus second person is more effective?

Stephanie Nivinskus:

First person, always. Hands down, it always wins.

Laura Dolan:

So “Give me my discount.”

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Yeah. Absolutely. Because here’s the thing that we need to keep in mind is that we’re marketing to people. People, at the end of the day, people are making the buying decisions. And it doesn’t matter if you’re making a buying decision on behalf of a billion dollar corporation or you’re making a buying decision on behalf of a two person company. At the end of the day, it’s still about what does the person that’s making the decision want, and that person is indeed an I, right?

Laura Dolan:

Exactly. So yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, we’re all in this for ourselves, even though we are doing it on behalf of something, it’s our personal decision in how we’re going to make the best choice. So yeah, definitely.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

And we know that if we are making a decision on behalf of the billion dollar corporation, well that’s part of doing our job well, and we do our job well, and we get more recognition in the company, and then we get more raises, and then we live happily ever after. Right?

Laura Dolan:

Right. That’s the dream.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Yeah. I think it’s also super important with your call to action to talk about what people really, really want. We have an innate desire as humans to do anything that’s going to save us time, anything that’s going to save us money or address another very common pain point. It’s always good. Always address whatever you really want. When you’re thinking about the product or services that you sell, what is it your customer really, really, really, really wants from you? And making that the call to action button. You’re going to get what you really, really want, so do it.

Laura Dolan:

And giving them the path of least resistance to it.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

The Air Force has a great CTA that I’ve seen that I absolutely love. They actually are quite bold, but I think it absolutely works for who they’re targeting. They have one that just says, “Prove yourself.” Which anyone who’s competitive, anybody who is eager to be a better version of themselves, they’re going to see that and be like, “Oh yeah, game on, let’s go.”

Laura Dolan:

Yep. That’s all I need to hear.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Ja. Ja. Jag är inte i militären. Jag är för gammal nu. Jag kommer aldrig att vara i militären, men om jag, som tävlingsmänniska, såg något som sa bevisa dig själv, skulle jag vara som, "Åh ja, okej. Nu går vi."

Laura Dolan:

Utmaning accepterad!

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Det är superviktigt att se till, det här är förmodligen det viktigaste jag kan dela med mig av, att om folk verkligen vill öka konverteringarna måste de lägga till fler CTAs på varje sida på deras webbplats. De flesta företag använder inte tillräckligt mycket, och på grund av det lämnar de stora, stora pengar på bordet. Har fler CTA:er. Du måste verkligen, verkligen ge människor flera möjligheter att fatta beslut om att gå till nästa nivå med dig.

Laura Dolan:

Grymt bra. Så alla chanser du kan ... Alla möjligheter att bryta upp din text eller bara ha den knappen i mitten av din webbsida, lägg den bara där. Jag menar, vad har du att förlora?

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Och att vara uppmärksam på att människor fattar beslut på olika sätt. Människor behandlar information på olika sätt. Vissa människor kommer att se det stora, djärva uttalandet högst upp på din webbplats med uppmaningsknappen, och de kommer att vara redo att klicka och få saker att hända.

Laura Dolan:

Right.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Det finns andra människor som, de är processorer, eller hur? De är noggranna beslutsfattare, de tar sin tid. Faktum är att de har en personlig filosofi att de aldrig fattar beslut under press, och det är de som kommer att läsa och läsa och läsa och läsa, och de kanske läser in i den tredje delen av din hemsida och är redo att fatta ett beslut, men de kanske inte. Det kan ta dem att komma till den femte sektionen eller den sjunde sektionen. Så ge dem möjligheter på hela sidan att vidta åtgärder så att de inte behöver leta riktigt hårt för att den knappen ska konvertera när de är redo. Det är riktigt nära var de än befinner sig i sin läsresa, så de kan enkelt bara scrolla upp en liten bit eller en liten bit ner och klicka på den knappen, konvertera och få saker att gå framåt.

Laura Dolan:

Varsågod. Det är bara att ge dem den stora möjligheten varje gång. Grymt bra. Tja, att vara medveten om tiden, Steph, jag är ledsen, Stephanie. Jag får-

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Steph är bra.

Laura Dolan:

Jag känner dig riktigt väl nu. Finns det något mer vi inte har tagit upp som du gillar att prata om innan vi avslutar?

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Jag tror att så många företag bara lämnar så mycket pengar på bordet genom att, och om du bara gör några riktigt enkla justeringar på din webbplats, kan du absolut spränga din omvandlingsfrekvens. Jag har faktiskt något som jag tror verkligen kan hjälpa din publik att öka webbplatsomvandlingarna direkt. Det är “7 snabba och enkla justeringar” som de kan göra till sin webbplats. Dessa sju tweaks, bokstavligen, de är riktigt snabba och enkla att göra, och när du gör det kan du se en omedelbar, omedelbar skillnad i dina webbplatsomvandlingar. Så varför skulle du inte vilja göra dem, eller hur?

Laura Dolan:

Exakt. Jag älskar det. Ja, snälla skicka det. Jag kommer att lägga det i bloggen för denna podcast. Jag ska se till att länk är spridd överallt så att våra läsare kan ha flera möjligheter att ladda ner det, för det vill jag också läsa. Jag behöver veta.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Ja. Grymt bra.

Laura Dolan:

Grymt bra. Tack så mycket, Stephanie. Hur kan vår publik hitta dig?

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Du hittar mig på sizzleforce.com. Du kan också hitta mig på LinkedIn. Mitt efternamn är lite läskigt, så du måste titta på showanteckningarna för stavningen, men det är linkedin.com/in/stephanienivinskus. Och självklart är vi på Facebook, var på Instagram, vi finns på alla sociala mediekanaler, men LinkedIn och min webbsida är det enklaste sättet att spåra oss.

Laura Dolan:

Okej, perfekt. Jag ska se till att lägga länkar till dem i bloggen också. Och återigen, minsta motståndets väg, klicka bara på den länken och nå ut till Stephanie så hjälper hon dig.

Stephanie Nivinskus:

Tack så mycket. Det här har varit roligt.

Laura Dolan:

Tack så mycket, Stephanie. Det har varit ett nöje att prata med dig. Tack för att ni tog er tid, och tack alla för att ni tog er tid att lyssna på det här avsnittet av Optimizely Podcast. Jag heter Laura Dolan och vi ses nästa gång.

Laura Dolan:

Tack för att du lyssnar på den här utgåvan av Optimizely Podcast. Om du vill kolla in fler avsnitt eller lära dig mer om hur vi kan ta ditt företag till nästa nivå genom att använda våra marknadsförings-, innehålls- eller experimentverktyg, besök vår webbplats på optimizely.com, Eller kan du kontakta oss direkt använd länken längst ner i denna poddblogg för att höra mer om hur våra produkter hjälper dig att låsa upp din digitala potential.