Jeremy wants to buy a mattress. He knows the brand (Purple), he’s comfortable with the prices, and he even tried the products in person (during the pandemic!). But he didn’t end up purchasing a mattress. Why? He was confused by the information overload—too many options, the features and pricing was not clear, and the differences between the different products (even within the same brand) were not clear. This week, we examine ecommerce marketing through the lease of a consumer. We discuss topics of pricing (and anchoring), product merchandising, comparison pages to competitors, and how quizzes can help improve clarity. This was a fun discussion that sheds a light on the consumer mindset in as we go through the customer journey.
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Gen Furukawa: [00:00:00] hello and welcome to another episode of Cart Overflow. So today, finally, I'm back with Jeremy. We've been misconducting and we want to talk about our shopping experiences. And so this is more from the customer perspective of what goes through our mind when we're actually going through the purchase and.
How do we start with a need go through, compare with other products. And then actually, ultimately, ideally we end up purchasing. Jeremy, how are you doing today? By the way?
Jeremy Biron: [00:00:30] It's good to be back. Yeah. I had had quite a few people reach out to me wondering where will happen to me. I fell off the podcast there for, for a bit. Summertime here in new England had a few vacations, we lost power. We get hit by a tropical storm. One week, things just kind of compounded. And next thing you know, I was off for several weeks, so it's good to be back.
Gen Furukawa: [00:00:48] Yeah, and you need your rest, which is why you're shopping for a mattress.
Jeremy Biron: [00:00:53] Well that's yeah, that's the example I threw out to you yesterday kind of when we were all right, what do we want to talk about tomorrow? When we back on the podcast, I'd thrown out to you. My wife and I have been, we, it wasn't planned had a little back pain, recently, decent amount of work and all that.
Both of us are working at home now. And we said, alright, we need a new mattress. Like most folks, I don't shop for a mattress every day. So we started, we went to a couple stores that a few out and then went online. Everyone, I don't know about your friends, but our friends are all said, well, why don't you get one of those mattresses you can buy online?
Are they pretty popular with your, your group as well?
Gen Furukawa: [00:01:30] Yeah, we have Tuft & Needle mattress and he tucked in the new mattress.
Jeremy Biron: [00:01:35] I have a lot of questions for you after again. Yeah. So we have been looking at the purple mattress. Tuft and needle has come up. Casper's come up. You know, the typical avocado I think is another one. And I said to you, you know, it's really interesting Gen. You can easily find the differences between one mattress company versus another.
Maybe not easily. A lot of them are very similar actually, but if I go to Casper, a lot of times, it's going to explain, okay, here's the difference between a Casper and a purple mattress, by the way, purple is a brand for anybody that's not familiar. I'm naming mattress brands. Direct to consumer brands. And what was very interesting is when I went on, I'll just name one side of the Purple site.
They have four different models and it's not clear to me what the difference is between those four different models. And they range from, I don't remember the actual costs, but let's just say the base model is a thousand dollars and the number for the best model, quote unquote is. $4,000 or $3000, something like that. There's a pretty big range between them. And I started talking to my wife about this and it just amazes me. Do you remember the old phrase? "Good, better. Best." I don't know if we want to call it a phrase, but it's like on some sites they use it. I feel like they used to use it a lot more or in the store.
Good. The good model, the better model and the best model. And what was interesting is that you can't determine that easily on a lot of these sites and it can be very frustrating, as marketers, we tend to focus externally a lot, like, Oh, what are, what am I at? How are my ads performing? We, you and I have talked a lot about content, right?
Like, all right, I got this externally facing content that sits on a blog, or I have affiliate content. We'll call it X. When I say externally, I just mean off of my main domain outside of my actual web shop.
But this has got me thinking where wait, we don't focus enough internally. So we talked about, we talk about the nation on page, but this is really interesting because it's more than just how is this going to perform for SEO or how is it going to convert? How is the actual customer perceiving this? When they come to my site, can they figure out he's really what my, what my different models are? How is it going to matter to them? Can you relate to this Gen?
Gen Furukawa: [00:04:15] Yeah, I definitely can. And I went through the mattress. Process mattress purchase process a few years ago. I don't really love the idea of shopping for a mattress, frankly. It's not that interesting maybe because there's not that emotional excitement behind it yet. It's such an important purchase because it's one that you're going to use for a decade and two, you sleep on it for ideally eight hours a day.
So a third of your life you're using this product. So you really do want something good. And yeah, I also wanted the convenience. So I went there e-commerce route. And basically this is the value of brand I was aware of Casper or Tuft and needle. And maybe there was another one. but those are all sold on Amazon, but also they have a really good convenience policy and shipping policy on their site.
So again, they follow the similar model a hundred days free trial. If you don't like it, return it free shipping both ways. the pricing is the same, but I actually know exactly what you're talking about, where. These, these are topics. When we talk about the features of the mattress, they're not immediately clear, like what the difference is in the type of foam or the firmness.
That's a really hard thing for us as a consumer to feel if we're not that familiar with it. And we're doing this as an online purchase process.
Jeremy Biron: [00:05:41] Yeah, I completely relate. So ed, you said the different features. What is the additional value that I'm getting or what's the actual difference? Is the foam exactly the same between a thousand dollars model in a $3,000 a month? Well, it was on for purple as the Purple. There was a difference in like two inches of foam versus four inches of foam.
But what does that mean to me as a consumer? I shop for a mattress once every, I don't know. I have no idea, 10 years, maybe a little bit less than that. Maybe a little bit more than that, but. How does that two inches of extra foam even matter? Does it help it last longer, is the warranty exactly the same, is it going to be more comfortable to me?
Is it going to be harder for me to roll over? I have no idea. It's not clear at all on most of these sites, what I'm actually getting is the consumer. So I just, it was really interesting to me that it just, it was not. It was not helping me move towards checkout.
Gen Furukawa: [00:06:42] Right. I wish that I had transparency into what the unit economics are, but let's take an example of a thousand dollar mattress. We'll call it the basic and the best premium, which would be, say $3,000. And so mattresses. By definition are high margin products. That's why I think I recently saw that there were 700 or so direct to consumer mattresses.
So you can basically, and a lot of them come from the same factory or manufacturing. So they, they might not differ from brand to brand in quality, but it's all about the brand. That's where a lot of these companies say Casper, they've started going brick and mortar where you can go try out the mattress in person so, you know the difference, but I would venture a guess to say that the margin yeah. On the premium $3,000 mattress are going to be far higher because it's not like the cost of goods. The materials use in that, in that $3,000 mattress are going to be that much better. So I think the profit, you know, it might be a lot more so it's, it's better for them to get that purchase the higher margin purchase. Of course. However, I think that they use that as anchoring. And so anchoring is a really important pricing mechanism to psychologically get the shopper to think, alright, I can go $3,000 or I can save $2,000 and go with a thousand dollar mattress. And so that might be where they're seeing a majority of their purchases and, getting healthy margins.
Jeremy Biron: [00:08:14] for anyone that's not familiar with anchoring, what can you explain in simple terms kind of what anchoring means in terms of pricing?
Gen Furukawa: [00:08:20] Yeah. So, I think McDonald's is probably a great example that we all know. So you go to McDonald's, you pay 99 cents for a medium fries, but for just 50 cents more, you get an extra large supersize fries. So you're thinking, okay, I can get a lot more say twice the volume for just a fraction, more of the price.
Of course I'm going to do it. So it just seems to, at that point they're using the, the 99 cent product to anchor the value of the product at that. And then for just a little bit more in money, you're getting a lot more in product. So it's it's to psychologically place a value on the product. And then from there, they can move either up or down, to make the customer, the consumer feel like they're getting a good deal.
So it kind of helps nudge us in one direction or the other.
Jeremy Biron: [00:09:16] Yeah, where I'm familiar with it is when within software. So if my goal is to get a hundred dollars a month as my price, I have a $200 or $300 plan that looks more expensive. And I put the two side by side on the site and all of a sudden, Oh wow, wow. $300 a month. That's expensive. Oh. They have a $100 a month plan.
Great. So now my mind is anchored to the higher number. Whereas if I put a $50 plan on the page in a hundred dollar plan, so I had no $300 plan any longer. All of a sudden I look at a hundred dollars and I think, Oh wow, that's a lot per month. Because of my mind is also looking at that dollar plan. So yes, you're right.
You can go up or down. typically what I'm familiar with is going down, so you're anchoring it on the top side and then psychologically that a hundred dollars plan looks a lot more.
Gen Furukawa: [00:10:16] Yeah, but getting back to the mattress as well, like you ended up not purchasing, right. Because it's a big investment. And so you had the intent, but you didn't have the follow through because you weren't convinced is that right?
Jeremy Biron: [00:10:29] Now I have, I have decision paralysis right now. There's too much information. The affiliate sites are not helpful. So these blogs that are out there that are supposed to give you a non biased view, which all of us as marketers know, there's always a bias view. All based on affiliate revenue. Most of those links are pointing back to Amazon since they're going to get a ton of affiliate revenue from Amazon or affiliate commission and yeah, my wife and I both have just have decision paralysis.
We have a couple of different mattresses that we like, but it's not clear. We really like this brand Purple. It w we actually had an opportunity to lay on it at a local store, and now we're going to get a direct from the direct brand and. We can go down. We can talk about that, the decision later, but yeah, we have decision paralysis.
It there's a bunch of different models and we're not sure which one to get, because it's not entirely clear, which one is the best fit for us.
Gen Furukawa: [00:11:25] Sure. So one that I think is an interesting site. I can't vouch for the mattress, but Helix mattress is one that they do a really good job. So I've been working on this product called Prehook and it's quizzes for Shopify stores. And so I've been really thinking about how do. This is a typical problem that brands might face, and it's going to be far harder at higher average order value products, like say a mattress. How do we find the right product for the consumer and make it as painless and easy as possible so that they don't have this decision paralysis.
And so helix has a sleep quiz on their homepage. All of the CTA buttons are really geared towards getting the user into the quiz. And the benefit of the quiz is that they are able to get the email. So it's, it's. Far better as an optin, or as a lead magnet. So to speak, to actually capture your email address, because they know that they're not going to get a lot of conversions on a first visit, but over time they can, once they have a channel to communicate with you, they can use their email or their remarketing or, SMS, even to continue the conversation.
Here's what helix is, this is why we're better than the brands. This is why sleep and mattresses are so important to your daily life.
Jeremy Biron: [00:12:50] No, I have not seen this quiz before. So this is very interesting. So I just went to the site that you'd said, helixsleep.com and I'm going to right away. You said it was a big call to action in the middle of the page that says, take our sleep quiz.
The first thing that they ask me for is my email address.
But they do this in an intriguing way. Cause we're, we're pretty protective over our email addresses lately. I don't know about you, but I get a lot of spam emails or a lot of marketing emails. They're not really spam because I give them my email address, and now I'm intrigued. Yeah, what am I going to get?
I really want to enter my email to see what this is very clear at the top of the pink has info. I assume that's going to, they're going to ask for some of my info, what's my weight height. I would have guessed the position. I would assume the position, my sleeping feel. So anything that relates to mattresses, we don't have to get into the details of the mattresses here, but it's anything that relates to me and the product to make it a decision.
And then at the very end, it's very clear to me, the very last step says match. So they're going to match me up with a product without actually seeing it, feeling it, touching it.
Gen Furukawa: [00:14:05] Yeah. And by the way that email you can skip, you don't need to, there was an option to skip it for those that are skeptical to enter that.
but I think where this is maybe helpful is your exact use case where you don't know what you want, but they're able to kind of drill down into even how many people and the weights, because these are things that for the mattress connoisseur, Are important to, to match you with the right product.
And then also on the backend, if you end up just buying any mattress without some guidance, then you might not be as happy a customer. And then therefore the referral, the referral revenue, or are you saying that you got a great mattress from helix and you're having a great experience. You're not going to be sharing that with your network or your friends.
you're probably not going to be a repeat customer. so there's that impact on the lifetime value over many years, and then just in general helps to, kind of like scale this experience of you going to your local shop and trying on a Purple. You probably had a dialogue with that salesperson.
They ask you like side sleeper, back front, whatever. These are things that the quiz can. You can answer, or they gathered the information and then provide you with the right product. And so once you get to the very end, then you have, you know, a recommended product, the right, type of mattress in terms of firmness and maybe I think that there's one, a premium option and then a basic option. But yeah, you'll see, once you do enter yeah. Email address, they have a very personalized email flow. So it's not just that I would get the same emails that you're getting they're specific to Jeremy's needs and then the mattress that you purchased and the information that you entered in the quiz
Jeremy Biron: [00:15:59] Very interesting. What was the name of the app? You said you were working on.
Gen Furukawa: [00:16:02] pre hook.
Jeremy Biron: [00:16:03] Well, pre hook is going to, I did you say, I think you said Shopify, is it basically going to allow folks to do something similar with their own Shopify store?
Gen Furukawa: [00:16:12] Yeah. So that's the goal and our intent. We're just trying to create A, a better customer experience for shoppers and then B. A better, like more rich dataset for the merchants, so that they're able to increase the conversion rate of getting shoppers to the right product. And then also on the backend create a better.
Email marketing campaigns to, to connect with their customer base.
Jeremy Biron: [00:16:42] So before this call, you and I were chatting about dog food for a few minutes, and you have an example that does something pretty cool, but that's a separate, that's a separate from what we're talking about right here. So I'm intrigued more about this. I'm intrigued by this quiz concept. I've seen that I've seen this before.
This is not the first time. However, the Helix Sleep that this helix quiz is probably one of the best examples I've ever seen. What are, do you have any other examples that stand out in your mind? So let's just say I sell dog food. This is why I started talking about dog food. What do you think I could do as a dog food retailer to use your app or another app on my Shopify store to set something up similar wearables, number one, to get more leads.
So email addresses increased conversion. I would assume. Cause it's going to point me in the right direction as a consumer. But also get additional details about folks visiting my site.
Gen Furukawa: [00:17:42] Yeah. So I think that there's a spectrum and we'll, we'll take dog food as an example, because there are some companies that actually do specific personalized food. One is The Farmer's Dog. They make. Food specific to your dog. So I just I'm fostering a dog now, which is how dogs came up so that when the inputs of what the customer's needs are as in, the dog type and the, the body and, age and activity levels, all these things are really important into what type of food food is created.
And then there's the other end of the spectrum, where there's a set number of products and SKUs and. It's just about surfacing the most relevant one. And in that case, I think that inputs might be the same, in terms of the, the dog and the type of weight activity, whatever. But the product that's being recommended is going to be one of X number of SKUs.
so that that's where it differs. And I've seen a couple dogs companies. There's a new brand that just launched called Sundays. I think Sundays for dogs.com. They use quizzes and they also don't. They have a set number of products. They're not making custom products. but I think one thing that I like that they do that a lot of Shopify stores can do is they have a really robust comparison engine.
And so this is something that in SaaS, the software as a service world brands will create comparison pages for the exact reason that you were talking about with a mattress, because not everybody knows the side to side comparison of product feature sets. And so a comparison page really helps for that. you might often see a matrix of, you know, feature going across and then a Product A and product B.
And so it's often not that objective. You'll see that, of course this site that you're on will be favor, you know, drift verse Intercom is one example. They're both conversational marketers. They have a little widget in the bottom, right corner of the websites that they're on and you can chat. Chat bot basically.
And. Both are very comparable. Each have their own comparison page and they will make the pitch for their own product. For those customers that are at the bottom of the funnel.
Jeremy Biron: [00:20:05] Well on this, you said Sundaysfordogs.com. So on the Sunday site, I haven't been here before. This is pretty cool. So it's comparing Sundays to blue Buffalo. Blue Buffalo for anyone not familiar as another brand of dog food. And I believe it's pretty popular. I don't know a whole lot about the dog food market, but I do know the Blue Buffalo name is very popular and it's really cool because you said you've seen a lot of these comparison pages in the past, but they're not always clear.
So right at the top. I recommend anyone listening go to eventually, if you're driving, don't do it on your phone. But when you got in front of a computer, go to Sunday's for dogs.com and check this out, there is a big call to action to compare, and then you can select whatever brand they're they're side by side one's on the left, one's on the right. They do a snapshot at the top for the, it looks like five different differences, like the most important differences between the two, but then they do a detailed comparison. What's really cool that I like is that visually the positives are in green. The negatives are in red, so I don't even have to read them.
I know which one is winning. Of course, as you pointed out almost every single time, it's Sundays because it's their site. However, visually it's very clear to me. And this is something that's relatively easy to put together on a website. Like just to do a side by side comparison like this, this is not that hard to put together.
In the Sunday's example. I think they say they have 3000 comparisons that that's a bit harder to put together, but if you want to do just versus your main competitors, this is great. The other piece of it, which you may or may not have mentioned again, is that this is incredible for SEO comparison pages.
Comparison pages are amazing for us because people search. Sundays versus Blue Buffalo. This is going to show up in the Google results because it's exactly what the consumer is looking for.
Gen Furukawa: [00:22:08] Yeah. there's you know, for, in the SaaS world, for example, there's even a site called alternative too, because that is definitely a bottom of the funnel search query. People are looking to compare. They've been through the awareness, the desire there, they're actually looking with high purchase intent. So if you can put together an alternative page and I don't see a lot of eCommerce brands that do this necessarily, and I think what Sunday's does well is that it's actually a fairly robust page in terms of the description and the content on the page.
So it's not really just a thin, like thin content, Blue Buffalo verse Sundays. And then by us here's a link. but then they do go into detail. And I think the benefit is of course for the search engine algorithm. so that's good. And then one thing that I do recommend is I'm just generally more of a skeptical shopper, so yeah, I might see a green and red and that might. Be an easy indicator, but I do actually want to know that it's not just like an empty comparison and that it's just a pitch for me to buy. Because this is another point where I can educate myself as a consumer. If I want to learn more about Blue Buffalo. And I think Sundays does it do a good job of this.
And I think you're right. One, one way to do this. If you are on Shopify, so you just basically create a table and it might not be the most visually beautiful. And I think that there are apps even that help you do this, but you can just create a table going down. What are the main things that people are looking for with the product, and then what are the different products. And, you know, even if you want to be more objective, you can link out. I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing. just make sure that you link it to another tab and, and just help your customers be more informed because ultimately, Jeremy that's maybe where you felt fell short in deciding to make a purchase is because you had so much overwhelm that you, you didn't have clarity in your thinking and you weren't able to make a purchase decision with confidence. Because there's this too much, right.
Jeremy Biron: [00:24:15] You're exactly right. Analysis paralysis. And you were completely overwhelming where I don't I'm ready to make a purchase now, but I don't know. There are so many different options, even on a single site. I don't know which one to pick. So I'm convinced of a brand. I like this brand, but I still can not decide cause there are so many. There are different options and I can't understand and easily what the difference between those options are
Gen Furukawa: [00:24:45] Right.
Jeremy Biron: [00:24:46] looking at this. Can we, I just want to take one step back, so sorry to skip around, but I want to take one step back to that Helix quiz again. So I went through the Helix quiz quickly.
It's very short. I think that's the key to it. It's like, all right. I just have to go through a few steps and it's going to tell me what to, what it's going to recommend. At the end of it, it brings me straight to the product page, but then there's an overlay. So there's a modal overlay over and, that sits on top of that product page.
And it's telling me, we're recommending this product. It's called the Helix Midnight. It's just one of their, it doesn't really matter what it is. It's just one of their models. And it gives me three reasons why they recommended this model for me versus their other models. And it's all based upon what I entered into that quiz.
I think this is the absolute best example that we could have found for a quiz and then solving the problem that I brought up originally, which was not being able to easily differentiate between the models on the site or products on the site. We got a lot out of this episode, it was a pretty quick one.
we talked about the original problem that I suffered as a consumer, got to a couple of different tactics that folks can use. Personally. The best thing that I got out of this episode is using a quiz, even though this wasn't planned using a quiz to guide the consumer in the right direction and help them avoid analysis paralysis.
Anything else that you wanted to point out before we close out the episode Gen?
Gen Furukawa: [00:26:19] Well, it's just an, we're clearly at an interesting juncture in the world. You know, we're, we're in a pandemic. I'm actually surprised I wouldn't want to lay on a mattress that other people have laid on. So, you know, I I'm, I'm far more inclined to do. e-commerce safety of my laptop rather than go in.
Cause you know, I'll, I'll use it a hundred day return policy and or trial policy and just order something. But you're more intent on trying it. But I think there are probably more people that are going to be like me going forward then, like you, people are not going to want to be dealing with other people and in a retail interaction.
So this is where I think taking the, the shopper perspective. Is really important and that's kind of like what I'm aiming for with pre hook. And I don't want to pitch it too much or talk about it, but I think how can you guide your shoppers to address what their main questions are, their concerns and their desires, and then get them to the right product.
So whether it is a quiz as your mechanism to gather that, gather the information and then give them the answers, or it's just a really thoughtful user experience, I think jeremy your experience of being a confused and overwhelmed shopper, uncommon and simplifying things. And then making the benefits, the features and the differences, whether it's within the products that you're selling within your own product line or with competitors and making that very clear is only going to benefit the merchant and the shopper, and ultimately, you know, you, you were paralyzed in your decision making and didn't do anything. And I think if you're able to increase it clarity and reduce the friction, you'll end up with more conversions.
Jeremy Biron: [00:28:12] Definitely. I think that he term there's clarity, just provide clarity and you'll get higher conversion rate.
Gen Furukawa: [00:28:18] Yeah. Easier said than done, but, yeah, a simple takeaway.
Jeremy Biron: [00:28:24] Well, thanks for chatting Gen, once again, it was good to be back on the podcast and we'll, I look forward to chatting with you next week!