AJ Davis  00:00  In today's episode, I spoke with Garrett from Eco-Stylist.com and we're going to talk about how they're rolling out this new option for people to work with a personal stylist through their website, ecostylist.com. All the products that they sell are sustainable, eco eco-friendly, and they will custom find these products for you. So they're not just recommending brands, but they're going to send specific links to buy the products to people for a small fee, and people can sign up one time, monthly or quarterly.  I think it's a great service, but we want to make sure that people realize that when they encounter the landing page, so in our audit today, we take a look at that experience to make sure that people understand all the value that they're going to get from the subscription, and we go through some of the user experience or UX of the actual quiz itself to make sure it's easy for people to use. Let's jump in. Hey, Gary, so nice to have you on today. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your company? Yeah,

Garik 01:02  Sure, yeah. I'm Garrett Himebaugh. I started as an eco stylist over six years ago now. So Eco-Stylist is a resource to help consumers find and shop sustainable clothing, sustainable ethical clothing, and shoes. I started this business in Iowa, when I was at the University of Lowa, doing my MBA program there. And so basically, kind of the quick overview of me is, you know, I spent the last six years in this space. And so really, that's where I've been building, you know, my kind of professional career and, like, expertise and things like that. And in this space, I am good at working in.

AJ Davis  01:39  What drew you to this problem space? What is it about it?

Garik 01:43   Yeah, I think so initially I just wanted to build a startup. And I was, like, really interested in, like, you know, solving consumer problems. That was, like, really exciting, right? So I was like, I got in fashion by, kind of by accident. There was like, I mean, I like fashion, but there was, like, an event in Iowa City that was, you know, it was a stark weekend event that was focused on fashion. And so I was like, that sounds like a good fit for me. And I did that event, and I won with my idea. But it was, it was a very different idea than what I have now. So initially we were looking at like, consumer problems of like, like, if people want to find something, and like they we talk to people, and people have been looking for like, six months for like a yellow jacket, or something like a yellow rain jacket. And we're like, Okay, well, what if we built a tool that like when they text in, and this could stop codes, I don't know, could still be a good idea, but it's just they might change, but where they like text in, and then local stores could, like, text them back and be like, Hey, we have a Yellow Jacket. This is a photo. This is the price. So that was kind of initially where I started, and then I was, I was kind of evolving that, and I built and then I got focused on, like, helping men shops were closed because I found talking to those customers, I found all these problems they had. And then eventually, by accident, I kind of discovered this space where I was like, I was like, looking at these shoes, and the founder of the shoe company happened to be the guy that was like, they're selling them in this market. And he started talking to me, and he was like, Yeah, we pay everybody a living wage and everything like that. And so, like, I bought some shoes. Like, right? I bought, I bought shoes, like, right? Then, like, on the spot, because I was like, they look nice. And I like the mission, but then I, like, looked into it more afterwards, because I was like, why, you know, I was like, why is he so focused on that, right? I was like, why is that important? And that was when I kind of found, like, the bachelor's, we had all these challenges that currently need to be solved, right? And it's like, and it's gonna take a lot of approaches to solve these problems. But I think, like, you know, individuals with startups and, like consumers, can be part of that change. And so it's like less than 7%. It's like three to 7% of quality makers earn what we consider, like a fair living wage. And I, you know, in like, with fast fashion growing, there's like, closer just ending up in landfills. You know, it's like 60% of new clothes end up in the trash in less than a year. So we're kind of at this place where, like, we need to drive change in fashion. And that's how I got so I got inspired by that, and that's what I started six years ago. Was like, I was like, I want to build a tool that helps people make kind of just better choices, like, when they're trying to shop for clothes, like, how do they support brands that are trying to be part of these solutions, instead of, like, kind of part of the larger industry problem?

AJ Davis  04:01  Yeah, I love the story that you're sharing too. Like you were focused on finding user problems, and then you combined it with real-world problems to build a business at that intersection. So I think that's a great way to find a passion and also to connect with a real audience. I'd love to hear a little bit about your audience. Can you tell us about who is either your target audience or who ends up using your site the most?

Garik 04:26  Yeah, it's funny. You guys like, we're, we're actually just building like, new customer profiles, but we, yeah, basically it's, you know, it's a conscious consumer, right? So there's, we have a wide range of people, but the average, or, like, the target, would be, they're like, you know, 25 to 34 um, you know, conscious consumers that like they want to, they want to shop more sustainably, you know, but they don't know how like they you know, the kind of things they'll tell us is, like, we don't know of a source to do this. We don't have a source we trust. And then with our newest service of like, the styling, we're trying to solve their additional problems, like, because even then, clothes are complicated. So even if you want to shop sustainably and you have a source, you try. Just, it's still like, really, could be tedious if you don't like shopping, to find things that are your style, that are your size, that ship to you all this stuff. So we kind of wanted to solve all those other user problems that people were telling us, like, again and again, that they have and so, yeah. So basically, yeah. So it's kind of this conscious consumer in that age range, you know, tends to be like, tend to be, like, urban, you know, like, college degrees, like higher income, part of that just for, like, for the target as I said, we have customers across the range, but this is because, you know, some of these clothes are more expensive, so it's an easier decision for kind of consumers in that bracket. Because, yeah, it's really like, it's kind of like, especially in light of fast fashion, it's like, you know, we've gotten to this point where, like, you can buy a t-shirt for less than a cup of coffee, you know, it's kind of like, even though the price of something sustainable clothing would be normal, especially relative to inflation, it's, it's kind of like our perception of what's normal is changed in years. So, yeah, we're trying, like, so really we're, you know, people who are like, have me, like, have the means are ready to invest in, like, clothes that are designed to last and, you know, have a, have a better story of how they were created. So

 AJ Davis  06:01  Yeah, it sounds like there are a lot of attributes of the clothing, but the real problem is that people have trouble finding it in the first place or finding stuff that works for them. One of the things you mentioned, before we hopped on today, was one of the challenges you're having around conversion, or finding the right way to connect with customers, was this quiz or the style finder guide? Can you tell us a little bit about that before we take a look at it together?

Garik 06:23  Yeah. So it's still a relatively new service that we've launched where, yeah, where like I mentioned, we could solve all these additional user problems, and the way we do that. So the most popular option there is for people will sign up for a monthly subscription, and basically, they take a style quiz. So it starts with this style quiz, and there, that's where we get to learn all about them, like, like all those things that are important to them, like their sizes, like where they live, or, like weather, you know, because it's like, obviously, if you live in, you know, Austin versus, like, Alaska, you know, it's like what we're picking up, but you might be very different based on the weather, like their style and all these things. So basically in this intake, we learn about them, and then they receive, like, personalized shopping recommendations monthly in their email. So that's, yeah, that's kind of the service. And we've just been kind of experimenting with, like, the best way to go, like to onboard people or help them get started in that process, right?

AJ Davis  07:16   And just to play back what I heard before we take a look at it. So it's a way for people to subscribe to getting personalized recommendations, but they're not receiving the product in the mail. It's more about, here's what, here's where to look for that yellow jacket, if that's the type of thing, or if that matches their profile being in Austin, Texas, yeah,

 Garik 07:34  exactly, exactly like it's not going to show up at their door. It's more like they're going to receive personalized recommendations and emails like things that they would love or things that they wear that include things they're looking for too. Like, if we learn in their ink quiz that they want to build a business casual wardrobe, or they're looking for more dresses, or like, whatever like we can cater to those kinds of things as well.

AJ Davis  07:53 Yeah, I love it. I haven't heard of any services doing just that. There are so many subscriptions where they'll mail it to you, but I don't get a chance to filter it out. So love, love the idea.  Excited to look at it on your site together. Is there anything else our audience should know about your business before we take a look at the site together?

 Garik 08:12  I think we're, I think we're probably ready. Okay, good.

 AJ Davis  08:15  Do you mostly have folks coming on mobile or desktop? Do you have a preference for how we look at the site together today?

Garik 08:22  That is a good question. It's still, it's been pretty equal for us. It's been, yeah, I would especially recently, it's been more like 5050, for the most part.

AJ Davis  08:30  Okay, great. We'll take a look at it on the desktop. We get a lot of people on our podcast who have mobile as a more dominant traffic source. That way, we can kind of mix it up for our audience. So a lot of the time, folks are listening along at home and looking for notes and tips for themselves and their business. And so this will give them a chance to see that. All right, so I'm on eco-stylist.com. The first thing that popped up was, I think this was on a little bit of a delay, was this, stop browsing your search for sustainable clothing ends here with the call to action to join our community. My initial impression of this is, I like that you're asking for email. I think it's nice we've seen this be very successful in terms of capturing email without hurting conversion rates. I would be a little bit more direct with your language here. I think there's an opportunity to say a little bit more about stopping browsing. Your search ends here. But what happens when I join the community? Am I joining the email list? Am I getting a discount? Will I get access to something? There may be some way to just be a little bit more clear, join our community. Sounds a little bit like maybe a Facebook community or a LinkedIn or something. So just something a little bit more direct could be helpful. I think the term subscribe may be simple enough there as well. All right, so go ahead and take a look. I'm going to take a look at the style quiz that you mentioned. I am a little curious. Do you expect that you would want most people to take that style quiz as a primary action on the site, or is that more of a secondary supporting action?

Garik 09:57  Yeah, no, not a primary. I wouldn't say primary. Reaction, because it's sort of a, it is sort of a subset of our, of our readers, right? Like, we do get a lot of traffic to the sites and, like our blog, for example, and things like this. So I wouldn't necessarily expect it like, yeah, it wouldn't be like, a primary action for everybody, but it's kind of like, but for our core consumer, yeah, we would expect, like, pretty high conversion rates. I mean, I think we tested for a bit. I took it down because it was just in a moment because there's a lot of work, but we took it while I was offering some free results, I was like, if you take the quiz, you can get some free results. And the conversion rate was very high. It was like, 50% of the people who went to the page, like, took the quiz. So that's kind of, that's kind of what we're looking for, something like that. Yeah, yeah.

AJ Davis  10:43   I mean, it sounds like you're validating that there's interest there. And then the question is kind of, you know, the expectation of how it works and all those things. Well, the reason I asked that question was twofold. So one, I do see it as the first thing in your navigation, which tends to be the thing people will click on the most. So there's a bit of a question of, do you want people to shop most of the time when they come? Do you want them to take the quiz most of the time? And just thinking from a business perspective, typically that first item on the far left side of the navigation will be the thing clicked on the most. So thinking about the hierarchy of those different calls to action, and then with that in mind, the shop brands being different from the style quiz is kind of a contradiction or an opportunity to align. Here's the first action we want you to take on the site. People can still go to the blog, and they can still take other actions, but it's a way to focus people on a single call to action on the site to align those two. It may be shop brands, and it may make sense to have the shop be in that first position, but if you want more people to see the style quiz, you might consider testing out or switching it. All right, great. So I'm taking a look at the quiz here, sustainable clothes picked just for you by our stylist with recommendations. Now, one of the things I mentioned before we started screen sharing is that I thought it was a standout thing, that you're sending an email with recommendations rather than a box of specific products. And I wonder if there's a way to just be specific here about maybe, is it a monthly email or something like that, pointing you to those products versus your purchasing or committing to purchase a certain number of products, I think what you have here is logical. It just kind of is the direct language might counter some of the preconceived notions people have coming to the page.

Garik 12:34  Okay, yeah.

AJ Davis  12:35  So I'm on a pretty small screen size. I do that on purpose, because we often design using our big screens, and then most people are on smaller devices, either their mobile phone or a tablet or maybe a smaller laptop like I have the take your style quiz below the fold for me. I don't know if that holds up on a bigger screen, but I would recommend shrinking this section here in the middle so that people can see that button without having to scroll, so that way they know how to get started. There how it works, select the service, complete your quiz, and curate a shopping list. I do wonder if one versus two is the right order because it does ask me to take the quiz first, and then I haven't been asked yet about selecting the service, so I'm wondering if I should go figure out a service, or if I should go ahead and take that primary action. So if it can be done the other way around, you might just flip those so that there's no extra confusion.

Garik 13:33  Yeah, definitely

 AJ Davis  13:37  Let me have the results. They all come from Eco-Stylist certified brands, which I love there, we'll do the shopping for you. I like this phrase you have here. Stop searching for sustainable clothing. We'll do the shopping for you. Or we'll, maybe, there's another way like we'll do the browsing for you, or we'll, we'll share a short list with you, something like that to just be concise about how it works. I could see that kind of mirroring or being more direct in this hero section, the top part of the page, okay, and then you've got some social proof. I see you're using this carousel. This is a pretty common design that shows up where you have these buttons where people click, the click targets are small, so it's easy for people to miss it, or either unintentionally or intentionally, like they won't see it and won't know to click it, or they'll try to click it and may not, may not tap it correctly. You might consider adding some additional support for visitors, like these arrows on the left and right side to navigate. Sometimes just creating a little collage can be impactful as well because here I'm drawn to this person's face. I'm not drawn to their quote. And I wonder if having quotes with smaller faces would give you the credibility of the specific person, but emphasize the qualitative aspect of that feedback. Yeah. So you might consider just reorganizing that a bit to emphasize the words and why this was so impactful for folks. Okay, and then we've got them the different choices. So I did remember earlier it said number one, pick my style. So I'm going to try to do that and just follow the steps. So the first one was either monthly, quarterly, or quick style fixes. So it looks like there are some potential savings in this by doing this less frequently. I'd love to see that called out that could be a really helpful thing for conversion. Is to say, you know, save $10 per set of recommendations. Or if you have a certain number of recommendations you give, you know, is it $5 a recommendation, or do you now save $3 a recommendation? Sometimes breaking it down for people can show the value of that higher-frequency subscription. I think one other thing here is we have the quiz and the suggestions, I think calling out something like, if there's no commitment to purchasing I think that would be something I would just want to be confident in. I pay these fees. I get an email list with links to products that are, you know, available to ship to my area, that you guys have validated, and I don't have any commitment to purchasing anything in addition to this subscription. Is that how it works? Yeah,

 Garik 16:22   No, I love that. Yeah. I thought about that as being but, yeah, that's a great idea.

 AJ Davis  16:27  Yeah. Sometimes we focus so much on what is included that we forget to highlight what the expectation might be coming in that it's like, oh, I'm afraid that I'll be caught in this situation where I have to spend, you know, $500 each month on clothing. That's not what's happening here. Instead, maybe I can save it. Maybe that list can be I can bundle them and buy them all after a couple of months of deciding so that just kind of thinking through, like the questions, or maybe the things people would protest in subscribing and making it clear that they're not having to make those choices. Yeah. Stylish, no, okay. Epic queues. I love the FAQs at the bottom. We find that there's a lot of interaction with FAQs like this. So keep this getting filled out as you get questions from people because if they're looking for it and they can't find it on the page, this is a great place to kind of wrap up and find it. Yeah, all right, so let's say I picked quarterly recommendations, so I'll go ahead and click sign up. It looks like I'm here picking a service and completing your quiz to get started. So what I'm expecting is that I can fill this out. I can see the cost. It's billed annually. I can purchase it here. I can submit the form. I'm not going to go through this today, but if I were to submit the form, would it show me a nudge to go take the quiz at that point?

Garik 17:56  Exactly? Yeah, it would be exactly after you pay. It would give you the link to the quiz. Something I should point out that's unique about this page right now is that I'm testing something exactly,, if you select it here, then this is what you have to pay first. But, if you call the other actions on the page, if you select them, it lets you start the quiz first. And it's because, yeah, it's because I'm, I was, I'm in the process of just testing that to see if people like that if people like doing the quiz before paying versus paying before the quiz? Yeah, yeah. I

AJ Davis  18:26   I think that's a great hypothesis to consider. Like, which flow makes sense to people? I think one of the observations I had, I did suspect that that was true as I went through but I was trying to be strict in following the guidelines. Yeah, the button styling, I think guided me to thinking it possibly was the same. So one of the tips I'd give to you in the audience is when we pick a call to action color and styling, we typically want to pick one for the site or for the section, and we call that the primary just primary action or primary button styling. And here you have that green button with the white font. It looks great. It's easy to see. It stands out. You might consider having a different experience for something secondary. So if, sometimes you see other things that you can take action on, on the paid but it's not this one you might style it. Maybe it's this gray that happens when I hover. Maybe you flip it. It's just an outline or just an underline, and that just gives people the repetition of seeing. See, take your style quiz. Take your style quiz every time, and now, when I'm ready, I know that's the same action I learned about earlier.

Garik 19:28 Yeah, that makes sense. 

AJ Davis  19:31 Right, I'm going to dive into the quiz itself so I have a LET'S GET STARTED Eco-Stylist quiz. I'm just going to use like, test information, so you guys will know you can toss that out. That'll work. And I do live in Austin, so I'll put that as well. I'll put in some placeholder info. 203, was that suggested based on the height? Or. It's just random. Curious. It's

Garik 20:01  random. No, it's Yeah. Honestly yeah, it's just a random mode.

AJ Davis  20:06   I'll go ahead and go through all these. It's got sizes, I think, for women's clothing, we often aren't thinking about small, medium and large. We're often thinking about a number associated with it, or maybe a combination of both. So it's one thing I would hesitate about, is kind of trusting the sizes. Yeah, and I think that these numbers, I don't think of my genes in these numbers. I think women are like, 2468, 10 in the United States. But I think this is the inseam potentially, or this is the least, but it might be nice to kind of give people the option to choose if they're not sure. Sometimes, when we ask for things that are that feel very definitive, like this, if there's not a way to say I'm not sure, then people might get stuck and jump out.

Garik 20:56 Okay, that's good feedback.

AJ Davis  21:01  And then sometimes things like shoe size, this is something we do on product pages a lot, is to show the different sizes. And some templates like Shopify templates have you choose from a drop-down. We've done some testing where exposing the numbers up front can be helpful because then people can just click right to it or see that it's not available. So here, I think it was a drop-down, and then it looked like it was a selector. I think you're building this with a quiz tool. So maybe there's not a lot of flexibility there. But I wanted to mention it because it might be applicable elsewhere on the

 Garik 21:33   Site. Okay, yeah,

AJ Davis  21:38  As a tall woman, I would expect to see tall as an option here as well. Yeah. And I suspect I think, like, big and big and tall is the men's version of that, exactly. Yeah. I think you want to start by sizing. You know, I think one of the things you might consider here is, like, if any other attributes might matter, I'm a pretty muscular woman, so sometimes I'd want my stylist to know that as well because that might change. I often see women's clothing, like, what shape is your body? And then having like the hourglass and the square and the apple shape and things like that might be familiar. Ways to kind of give some additional information to the stylist.

Garik 22:16  Yes

 AJ Davis  22:20  then it's going to ask you to go through all these, some of these thresholds, like the jackets, I suspect, would be a lot higher than, like, shirts, for example. I don't know if that's true in your set of clothing, but maybe there's a way to kind of break that down more about the item. These images are pretty small, so if there's a way to make those larger, that would be helpful, select all that apply. So it's like up to three here, to three, yep. I guess one other thing I'd add here is sometimes people like to say, I do wear this, and some people like to say, I would never wear this other thing. And so if there's a way to ask that question of, like, what, what should we never suggest, and what would you prefer that we suggest? And then everything else, kind of being in the middle might help us. Well, I know we're coming up on time. I love this conversation we're having. I want to flip through these real quick. I'll just click a couple of things and see if we can get to the end of it. I love how detailed this is. I think it gives me confidence that the person who's doing my styling knows more about me. So I want to mention that because oftentimes we think about the trade-off of how many clicks, and how much time something takes, but often the quizzes themselves. If we can be confident as a user that it's going to result in a better outcome for us, we're going to be more patient about doing it. Yeah, perfect. And I see the option at the end to do this. One other thought as I was clicking through that pretty quick at the end, was just to set expectations of maybe what it looks like. So I'd love to see here an example of how the emails laid out how many recommendations I get. Things like that could be insightful and help with that final moment of conversion. Here's what to expect next. Here's what it looks like. And that would help me be more persuaded to finish and complete with adding the credit card.

Garik 24:25  Yeah? Okay, definitely.

 AJ Davis  24:26  So we moved fast today. I know we're right at times, but I wanted to ask you two final questions. What are three things you're gonna do as a result of our conversion conversation today? Yeah, that was

Garik 24:37  great feedback. Honestly, I think there are probably more than three things, but yeah, the first thing was, I love the idea of, like, the first just even that pops up, like, being more specific. So I think the first thing would be, would be, yeah, would be like AB testing some, some variations of that email pop up to see if we can get the conversion rate higher, yeah. Also, the second thing would be, like, kind of your feedback on the. Top of the personal styling page. Like having, having the button be above the fold, and maybe having a language a little more specific. I think that's definite. That's a definite thing to do. I think the other thing would be, yeah, I liked what you talked about, like having the no-commit new thing. That's kind of an angle I hadn't thought about. And I think that will help. I think that helps. It's I think it helps it's, I think it helps make the benefit clear, but I think also it helps people understand service better. So I think that that kind of language would just add a lot of clarity. So I think that would probably be the third thing that I focus on.

 AJ Davis  25:32 Great Garik, well, I love what you're doing. How do people find out about you? And Eco Stylist, yeah

Garik 25:39 .  Well, I mean, I guess the first thing would just be our website, right? So eco-stylist.com, people, can we have a contact form that works and everything, we read all those emails and all of that. So that would probably be the easiest way. And then on social, we're installing a bit different, but it's on socials. We're at your eco stylist without any batch. Excellent.

 AJ Davis  25:59 Thank you so much for being on, and for sharing what it is that you're doing to make the world a better place and solve some real problems that people have with shopping today. Appreciate you sharing all of that with us. Thanks for being on, yeah.

 Garik 26:10 Thanks so much for having me, and thanks so much for the feedback.

AJ Davis  26:13 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 www.experimentzone.com  for all podcast updates as well. Thank you for dropping by.