AJ Davis  00:00 In today's episode, we talked to Jordan Salvit from Paint Plot. We had a really great conversation today where we looked at the website and we specifically thought about the journey from people who maybe find Paint Plot through Google Shopping, land on a product detail page, and need to learn everything there is before they decide to purchase. We talk about some different strategies for what information should be prioritized, what might be less important, and what might ultimately be confusing and lead to a decrease in conversions. Let's jump in. Jordan, thanks so much for being on today. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Jordan Salvit 00:41 Thank you for having me AJ. I'm excited to be here. I am an entrepreneur. I have been in the E-commerce space for 10-plus years. I started my first business again, over 10 years ago, a subscription business in the cat space. It was a toy subscription business. It's still around and called the Kitnip box, and we would sell toys and treats. And we do, still do sell toys and treats for your cat, but I sold that business and have reacquired that's a long story, probably too long for this podcast, but while I was sort of in between owning Kitnip Box, I decided to acquire a business called Paint Plot and, and that's going to be the fun of what we talk about today, but it's a paint by numbers business, and we ship Globally, but based in Australia and or it was based in Australia. Now we are based basically in the United States and Australia, and it's been a fun test to see how we can approach and do the same kinds of things we were doing for Kitnip Box to other businesses, especially since I also advise clients on how to run their businesses profitably. So it's been a great piece to the CIA, hey, this is what I did. This is how I advise, and this is what I am doing now today. Yeah,

AJ Davis  02:12 and we're excited. We have you scheduled for a follow-up to talk about all your expertise. So just going to give a little hint at that for our listeners. So tell us a little bit about the target audience for Paint Plot. How do you know who's looking for this? What are they looking for?  

Jordan Salvit 02:29 Right now, our target audience and maybe it's a chicken and egg question, I'll say that. Instead of telling you what our target audience is, our current customer base is largely older people. And when I say older, I probably fit into this category, but largely, I would say probably 50s plus that have some more time, or even 40s plus that have some time to dedicate to painting to something, and that is slow and methodical. The founder of the business started the business because he had an anxiety disorder, and and, and as part of his therapy, he was told to do some repetitive tasks, and therapies like paint by numbers. So he started getting into it and saw how repetitive a task it was, but it was meaningful because it gave him something that he created at the end of it, a skill that he was learning how to paint and continue to evolve. And so those are our customers. Our customers, I would say have the time. It's not a small task to undertake to do a paint-by-numbers kit and, and so that does take time to do and, and so I would say that's why they're a little bit older that can then handle it and then have the patience to do but really, the majority are just interested in having a new hobby to pick up. And that's really where this is where they're painting. I think there's a lot of people that have tried to do things like paint and sips and that kind of stuff, and they've done that, but those are one hour buckets. You don't walk away with skills. You just walk away with a nice painting. And so here, once you start to get into it and you do a lot more, you do end up building a really wonderful skill set. So I hope that answered your question.

AJ Davis  04:18 Yeah, tell us a little bit about that. So what is the customer side like? You know, you mentioned it can it's methodical, it can take some time, but you also mentioned some skill building. So what's that like? Life Cycle look like? What are customers learning and what's the experience like? Yeah,

Jordan Salvit 04:34 customers are the first time you ever get a canvas. You look at it and you're and it's a little daunting, right? I'll be honest, if you've never done a paint-by-numbers canvas before, or a paint-by-diamond painting before, there are lots of little numbers and little adjacent things you have to fill in. And we send a good amount of instructions on how to get started. Start to help you go in that direction. But really the skills are, how do you make sure you don't slob on too much paint, and then eventually, how do you blend the painting better so this way you don't see the lines and you can get everything connected nicely? There's a lot of eventual technique you learn, but the first painting, I think it's just an accomplishment to complete it, and then, and then afterward, once you get into it, it becomes a little bit of a, not only a really important hobby that you do but a strong skill that you can start to draw or use those painting skills, just in a nice way.

AJ Davis  05:35 That's nice. What are some of the challenges you have with, you know, communicating what the product is like to this audience, and maybe we can start framing it in terms of conversion?  Are there certain challenges that you've had or things that you've kind of worked through over the years with helping people understand the product?

Jordan Salvit 05:54  I think there's a first concern, which we do a good job at explaining, is that you get everything right. You don't have to have supplies at home as part of a kit. You get the whole set. You get the canvas, you get the paints, you get the paint brushes so that you can do it without having to go out and buy more. So that's, I think, the thing we do very well. But I also think people have an idea of what paint by numbers is from their childhood, if they've never done it before, and they may just think about it as, hey, I'm going to color in and I'll be okay. And it is a more daunting task than that, right? And so I think we have a hard time explaining that. And number two, because we are showing the paintings or the pictures of what the origin is for all of it, I think when there's a slight difference or a variation of the way that you did it was a little different. People are like, hey, it's not exact, but I would say most people are very proud of their final creation. So it's getting them over that hump to be willing to take a risk and say and also set the habit of building it and doing it. Do

AJ Davis  07:05 you find that most people are purchasing this for themselves to explore a new hobby, or is it sometimes, often a gift? Most often

Jordan Salvit 07:13  It's for themselves, and what they'll find is that people will buy the paintings for themselves to give the finished product as a gift. So we'll often do that before Christmas. Will run some promotions a couple of months in advance, so this way they have time to do the and do the paint by numbers and do the kit in completion before going and going live and giving it as a gift. Sometimes people give the gift, give the actual kit as a gift, but I say the majority of the time it said the other way around. They want to give the finished product

AJ Davis  07:49  as a gift. Yeah, it's almost like they have someone in mind when they pick out what it is that they're going to be creating. Oh, interesting. That's

Jordan Salvit 07:55  right, we have a new we have just to kind of go here, though. But one of the things that I find, that I think is very interesting, is the younger group of people. This is a big opportunity for us. I believe the younger people who are learning to paint are very interested and have patience. One of the people who bought the business with me, has a daughter, a teenage daughter who is loving getting into this. How is this hobby? She's learned a little bit how to paint in school, but this is giving her more detail and more skills, and it's, it's, it's better than she was getting beforehand. So I think that's a big opportunity for us, but we're not tapping into that market right now. Yeah, what

AJ Davis  08:40  I was thinking of when you said the paint and sip as but they always feel like you're in a rush and you always want a little bit more time. So it feels like a nice way to really get into the details at home with your own time. Yeah, do you find that most of your visitors are on mobile or desktop? Do you have a preference on what we look at today together? Um,

Jordan Salvit 08:57  you know, let's look at mobile, if you don't mind, I will say where most of our traffic is and I'll tell you, take a step back and tell you about our traffic and where that comes from. I'm not sure if that's helpful in your discussion, but the majority of the traffic comes from Google searches. We had advertised. The majority of our advertising was on meta, and the rising costs on meta told us to take a pause there. So the bulk of our traffic comes from Google Shopping, actually, not just Google. So people's first experience is the PDP page. That is where they're landing on that page. And so that's the bulk of our traffic. That's the bulk of the experience people start with either there or on a category page, as the ball is where that sits, and the majority of that traffic is mobile. So despite us thinking of our older population, and then thinking. And purchasing online on the desktop. I haven't analyzed enough to say where it sits, whether more people are buying on their computer, on desktops or not, but I think the majority of the traffic is coming from mobile.

AJ Davis  10:12 And one other follow-up on that, before we look at it, is, Are people General? Do you have a sense for people who have some kind of specific kind of painting in mind they're looking for? Are they really just looking for paint by numbers first and then picking which one they would like to do?

Jordan Salvit 10:29  So that's a great question, and I don't have a good answer. I believe that is the painting that drives people in the door, and I think it's both the painting and the price, but the painting is the big part. The reason why I can say why I say that is we run a weekly vote, where we get feedback from our community, and we have a huge outpouring of support and responses. And when we take their feedback and turn those paintings into actual paint-by-number kits, we immediately see responses and an uptick in sales, because it is the joy of both of them. They want to be able to have the skill but also want to have something they want to put up on their walls, and they want to

AJ Davis  11:15  do, yeah, and I love, I mean, anyone who's listened to the show before knows that. I always call it out when I hear a company doing a great job listening to their customers. So excellent to hear that you guys have a method for doing that. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. We have the mobile version up, so we'll take a look at that together. We'll find a PDP here to look at as well. And I'm just, I'm going to pretend like I'm not paying attention to what we're looking at here and just land on a PDP and then we'll get started here. Okay, is this a pretty good example of a PDP someone might land on? Yes, yeah, definitely a good starting place. Okay, great. Well, generally, how we'll do this is, I'm going to be sharing some feedback, but you know your customer best, so let's talk about what we're seeing and maybe some things you've tried out or have questions about. As we go, right off the bat, I see the photo front and center, and I see some nice little promo things at the top, maybe some incentives to stick around or maybe some to buy multiples. But the photos are really what's drawing me in. So I can see there's lots of detail embedded here. I'm just kind of flipping through that, and then we've got secondary support to go through those same images. I like to see this. I think this is a nice experience. We've done quite a bit of testing on how these carousels work, and generally, the more support you can give in, you know, nudging with here's the thumbnails, here's some arrows. Here are different ways to go through these. The more engagement you'll see with it. So great to see that.

Jordan Salvit 12:47  Do you see? So curious? Do you find that this is too big and that the imagery up top is too big before they've even seen the name or the details or any of the action or the call to actions is right, because you're looking at this now you're viewing it on an iPhone. I see, so that means that everything below the hummingbird kit words is below the fold, right, right? So would you typically recommend a smaller view of this, or what are best practices on that?

AJ Davis  13:24  If we were to remove from this context a piece of visual art that you'll be creating with some visual elements that you need, I would say, generally, the best practice would be to have some action above the fold and to have more information peaking up. So because you guys are doing something very visual, and because it may be important to get some details from these images, this would be a test that I think would be a good one to run, is to see how much, important this image being large, can we potentially move these thumbnails, maybe to the right side of it so people could move through them see that assistance of the thumbnails being there, but still bring up some of that content above the fold. We do sometimes find that these, like add to cart buttons, can be successful as a sticky action, particularly when there's not a lot of decisions to be made. That would be another test to consider that is one where we have seen it can be very helpful or very harmful. So I wouldn't just make that type of change. I think when we're looking for the basics on a PDP, we want to have the product image. You might consider moving the title a little higher up so they don't think this is the Paint Plot product, but they get oriented to this specific product, so maybe, if they're moving between them, they can see that. But I like that you've got a lot of reviews, and the price is pretty clear here. And then some decisions, frame, no frame. I am curious, about what that looks like. So I see. A no frame pops up when I click there, and then there isn't an image for the with frame. So I think, you know, that's an opportunity there to potentially just be clear of what it might look like between those two options.

Jordan Salvit 15:12  Got it Okay, good feedback.

 AJ Davis  15:15 And I think overall, in this space, you know, especially on mobile, sometimes we want to just tighten up the decisions to be 123, and if there's something that people don't need to do, we might de-emphasize it. So with that said, you know, you have this quantity selector selector, you have this quantity selector that's quite big and prominent. I don't, haven't seen your data to know if that's typical, just to get one at a time. But if that's the case, we may want that to be a little bit more compact, so that it's not, you know, you have to make a decision and think about quantity, but instead, it's the default, and if someone needs to change it, they can.

Jordan Salvit 15:50 That's a great idea. Okay, that makes sense.

 AJ Davis  15:53 And I think especially if these reviews hold up across these different products, I would draw more attention to reviews that can be positive. These are great. You have a good number of reviews. So you might consider, you know, increasing the scale of those. If you move the title above the fold, you might move that as well. And then people can see the images and then make the two selections here that they need to make. Quantity might be deemphasized, and that add to cart might be there. So again, I would test some of those combinations together. But I think you've got some good basic elements here.

Jordan Salvit 16:27 That's great, good feedback. I think the idea of putting the title and the title and the reviews up top is really, I think you're right. It's a great one. Otherwise, as you said, it may look like you're just arriving on a landing page without any real context of what you're looking at. Okay, good, good. I

AJ Davis  16:48  I think especially as you start to move between products, it gives you some people to learn through visuals only, or primarily some people respond to words. And so giving different people different ways to remember what products they're comparing can be helpful too, and that gives them that quick answer. I am curious. You have some add-ons here, so you have the brush sets, and when we were talking earlier, you mentioned that everything you need is in the kit. What's the relationship between those two things?

Jordan Salvit 17:16  It's a good point. We give you the basics as part of your kit, but this allows you to have a larger variety or many details, especially for the harder sets that are. You know may have very small, very small places for you to paint in. The ones we give you are good, but they are basic, right? And so this is an opportunity for us to give you that add-on. But maybe you're right. Maybe it's a little confusing. So I think we've always put it there because, in the past, it was one of our best sellers as an add-on. We still do it still is, but we end up seeing it being our best sellers as an add-on from the checkout, as opposed to from the as opposed to from the PDP page. So this may be a better opportunity to have maybe related items instead. I'm not sure.

AJ Davis  18:13 Yeah,  I had two thoughts come to mind for potential ways to kind of clarify what's included or not because you do have some information here like the brushes are included. You might actually kind of demonstrate, you know, free three brushes and then upgrade here with, like, a reason why you might want to upgrade, and what the differences might be between these two. Yep. The other journey that's pretty common is that after you click add to cart, we'll see if anything happens. Yep, you have this like, may you may also like, and so this may be a good place for that to just maybe clarify why you're adding it sort of not just that you can get brushes or brushes included, but if you would like some fine detail or to have a higher quality outcome, here's why you might want the upgrade. Maybe,

Jordan Salvit 19:02  if you go to the checkout we have in here, and I probably can take the Quick Add right, and that's we see the biggest uptick of these brushes here in the Quick Add. I wonder if putting that, putting it, and I wonder, I'm not sure I can modify the text on the Quick Add. But if I can, maybe that will be the opportunity to be like, hey, you know, add in this, or, to your point, all of those places I think are valuable or are valid. I think this is where we see the biggest uptick. And so figuring out how to explain this better in here would be probably great, yeah.

AJ Davis  19:38  And I think maybe the metaphor to carry wherever you end up with the best placement, and what performs the best is letting people know why it's a good add-on and that they already get something with it. So it's kind of that balancing act of you've got everything you need, but your experience will be even better with this add-on. Makes sense. I. Right. Let's hop on back. I guess now I've made myself over to the homepage. This may be a minor point, but one of the things I'm noticing is sort of the font differences across some of your pages. And we want people to see these like free offers around free shipping or buy one, get one, free codes. And visually, I think your logo is actually what's driving the attention because it's much larger. So on mobile, you might consider rebalancing the sizes of those things to really focus on the thing that's going to motivate the purchase. And I like the free shipping threshold you have here, the thing that we've seen as a level up to free shipping at this point is, once you have something in your cart, changing that message so it visually changes. It draws your attention to it. And the message might say something like, You are $54 away from free shipping. And then when you unlock it, you could say you've unlocked free shipping on everything. And so that kind of like gamify, in a tiny way, the design of that section, so that people realize that they're there and maybe motivated to stick around.

Jordan Salvit 21:07 Okay, that's great. Do you have any recommendations for apps that do that? Oh,

AJ Davis  21:12  I don't offhand. Have one. It's something that we've built in our testing directly. But yeah, you're right. There were probably some out-of-the-box ones that would be good for that good

Jordan Salvit 21:22  feedback.

AJ Davis  21:24 And so maybe the journey that someone might be on is they found the one image, and maybe they're wondering about the free shipping threshold. So now they're kind of at this place of getting to know the brand a little differently from another place. I'm seeing some opportunities on the homepage. Now, for that same reason, you have, like, over 50,000 happy customers here. Like, really draws my attention to that. I think that would be nice to see that it is a little bit larger there as well. I like that you've got the value propositions here. I don't recall seeing this on the product page. And this might be something worth replicating. So sometimes what we find is that things like free shipping thresholds can be really motivating, but people forget about them. And things that are value propositions can get someone to understand, like why this particular business, but they tend to forget it when they start thinking about other details. And we found in testing that either adding it back to the product page or adding it back right before the order can just be that like, oh yeah, that's why I'm buying from this company, reminder and nudge. So you might just repeat the same block, or have, like, a simplified version to remind people we

Jordan Salvit 22:35 have that block on one of the PDP pages before. So we did have it there, and we were trying to improve our conversion rates, and we started removing things from the landing to run the PDP. So there's probably an opportunity for us to take the AB test, introducing those things again and going from there. But we also had our PDP page that was extremely long, and it allowed people to continue to scroll forever. But if you want to pick, if you scroll down and pick another painting, maybe go to Yeah, landscapes and pick one of them. If you scroll down here, you'll see, so again, the same format, but what we had down below, so all of this, and then reviews, and then after the reviews, we have sort of you may also like. So beforehand, we had so many more things that were here. And I don't know whether I think this is the right set, but I'm not sure. So I guess there are best practices that you see when you implement a PDP of how much is too much and or where is the right placement of this kind of stuff? I

AJ Davis  23:51   That's a critical question, right? It's like, what do we need on this page? Honestly, with most businesses we work with the first thing we do is simplify so we would take what maybe you had before and bring it closer to what you have now. I think the main elements. I think when we first started on this page, I said, Oh, you look like you have the main elements here. So I feel like you are in a pretty good starting place. You've got product, image pricing, and a clear call to action. Maybe some order and placement could be changed. I think one of the things that we find with testing is the place of add-ons and how often and where those get placed can matter quite a bit to the specific audience. I suspect this like what's included as an area I'd be curious to iterate on, more particularly on mobile, since these are pretty small icons right now, when we have, like, a big block of text, sometimes we want to collapse that so there's certain elements, like the size of the painting that people frequently ask about, maybe we'd have different headers based on what kind of things matter to customers. And again, that's probably a blend of research and the. Or AB testing to figure that piece out. I like to see the duplicate action items on any page, so that's nice to see. And then you've got the reviews here. And then I think that you may also like in the FAQs, those are always ones I'd want to look at in heat mapping to see if we're getting people down there. And if we see FAQs where people are interacting with them a lot, that typically is a good indicator that we should bring it up higher on the page. Some sort of information about it.

Jordan Salvit 25:23  Nice. Okay, makes sense? Great. Feedback. Well,

AJ Davis  25:32  we, as usual, this time flies. So I'm going to ask my last two questions. If you had to think about just three things from today's call that either you're going to take action on or that we're inspiring some additional thought. What comes to mind for you?

Jordan Salvit 25:48 Number one, immediately doing a test or putting the header on the PDP page further up to see if that could get there, and if we can get some more calls to action in on the PDP when you open up immediately. So that's probably two of the action items that I would immediately take. And then I think your homepage callouts were also spot on, trying to make the logo smaller, so that that's the lead and less prominent as part of what we're doing, and put the reviews and a bigger one in that place. So I think these are, I think maybe I covered four things as opposed to three, but exactly so I think that's where I would go.

AJ Davis  26:31  Great. Well, Jordan, where can folks find you? If they're curious to learn more,

Jordan Salvit 26:36  You can find me on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn, my last name is Salvit, so just LinkedIn, slash in  Salvit, that's how you'll find me there, or you can reach out via email jordan@salvit.com

AJ Davis  26:53  Excellent. Thank you for being on today, Jordan.

Jordan Salvit 26:55 No. Thank you for hosting me. It's been a lot of fun.  

AJ Davis  26:59 Thank you for tuning in to the Experiment Zone Podcast, you can check out more episodes on YouTube, Apple Spotify, and your favorite podcast apps. Check out the show notes for any websites Linked In this episode, including where to connect with us on social media. We appreciate you tuning in. Remember to Like subscribe and turn on your notifications so you'll be updated on each episode release visit us at experimentzone.com  for all podcast updates as well.  Appreciate you dropping by.