AI, CRO & the New Rules of Consumer Engagement with Matt Crincoli

[00:00:00] Matt: instead of getting your creative teams to change a button color or to change like a couple pieces of text. Get your team to rethink what that page is even doing, what it's motivating people to do, where it's getting people in, like just zoom out a ton. Like that's kind of like the argument that I'm suggesting.

[00:00:17] Matt: And the thing that's made that really hard is like, that would have to come with a whole nother request to your ux UI team is like, build a whole nother wireframe. Now there's AI tools that can spit those things out so quick. So it, it allows you to kind of like make big, sweeping changes even faster, I'd say, and eliminate a lot of those process requirements.

[00:01:03] Kelly: Hey everyone. Kelly McGuire with Bo Digital. Excited to talk about

[00:01:07] Matt: Hey guys. Macro Cole here, strategist at Ji Day. Excited to talk today too about CRO.

[00:01:12] Todd: Hello everyone. Todd Juno, Kelly's partner and we've got Matt back on the show thankfully because that gives us really cool stuff to talk about. 'cause Matt's got a lot of neat experience. I. That's adjacent to and complimentary to yours, Kelly. So Matt, today you want to talk about, I'm gonna call it the new acronym, conversion Rate Optimization.

[00:01:35] Todd: Although it's not new, it's been around for a long time, but I liken it to long, long ago in web dev called landing page optimization, but maybe conversion rate optimization has expanded and gone into new territories, which you're gonna meander down. Today. But I think what we're gonna get into is what can be done relative to the fact that we spend a lot of time, energy, and effort planning an ad impression to show up in front of a consumer, arguably at the right place, arguably at the right time, arguably connected to the right signals that might suggest.

[00:02:16] Todd: That said, user or consumer could be interested in a product or service that our client is advertising. So we go to a lot of, of length and extent to do the work to make sure that that part happens. One of the things Kelly and I talk about a lot is what happens after that? What happens if we are fortunate enough that that consumer sees an. Likes what they see takes the time out of the three seconds that they just saw the ad to maybe click or eventually navigate to maybe a client's website or a landing page or a mobile experience or whatever it is. I'm gonna leave it right there because this is where I want you to pick up what happens in that environment.

[00:03:01] Matt: Whatever you want the user to do with the right art and the right science, and the right. Goal setting. I think the whole point, and kind of the whole value of this is, is you can really control what that customer does and the way that they interact with their business. And it could be anything. You know, you could have a customer come to a page to give you product feedback.

[00:03:20] Matt: You could have a customer come to a page to learn about pricing, to eventually come back and buy your product. You could have a customer come and. Get them directly into a purchase funnel too. So the cool thing about landing pages, and that's a part of C-R-O-C-R-O, goes beyond just the landing page and go on the site nav and go on anything, right?

[00:03:37] Matt: Landing page is essentially the best way to get and to motivate a customer to do a specific action in a controlled environment, and also allow the business to test different things that can motivate a customer to do things. So it's also an insight tool.

[00:03:49] Kelly: So I think this is interesting when I think about it this way, to me, this is where semantics really matter in the discussion, because there's two ways I think you can look at this, or there's probably more than that, but I'm gonna narrow it down to two ways, is I always think of it when we're trying to grab someone's attention and we're trying to show them something that connects with them and matters to them.

[00:04:13] Kelly: Ultimately, more often than not the first objective. In doing so is getting them into this digital environment. Oftentimes it's a website, a landing page, and perhaps something like that. And the instinct, I think from a company's perspective is how do I get people to do what I want them to do? Click on the buy now button, add to card, do this type of thing.

[00:04:35] Kelly: And that's natural. I think that's very natural to think about. I, I want to spend money to get these actions done. What does it take to get there? I. But to me there's a power, a potential power in thinking of it in a different way, or at least a different semantic way where instead of saying, how do I get people to do what I want them to do, you know, Todd and I had a debate around advertising in its purest best form should actually be exposing people to something that would improve their lives or being good for them, or is a match for their needs and helping them learn about it.

[00:05:06] Kelly: And so if you apply that same principle to the journey or in the environment, we're driving people into. It's instead of being, how do I get them to do what I want them to do, it's how do I facilitate the right interactions and the right journeys and the things that are gonna be matching up with their needs and their desires and their willingness to get them to where I need them to get.

[00:05:27] Kelly: And it's effectively the same thing. I think thinking about it in those ways can help frame the right decisions to make, because I oftentimes, what I feel like falls short is you'll put something together that matches your needs as the company or the brand, and it's not natural or what's easier or intuitive for the user.

[00:05:48] Kelly: And so therefore it creates a disconnect and it's like, why isn't this working? And it's like, well. You made it below the fold or you added three extra steps, or you're asking for a lot of personal information, or you're gating content and there's all these hurdles you're putting in the way that of course you're gonna get attrition and problems.

[00:06:04] Kelly: And so I, I say all of that to think about how do you think about what conversion rate, specifically the word optimization plays in terms of. Facilitating the end outcomes and the results that you want in doing that, and, and what are the pieces that you think about editing to get you there?

[00:06:25] Matt: That's a good question and maybe that starts with like thinking about who's actually seeing the ad and kind of sharpening it there a little bit is, is as you take your audience and you cut it into different groups, you can kind of take a hypothesis of we think this customer's at this point with our brand, like realistically, are they gonna come here and buy our product or are they gonna come here and see in him?

[00:06:45] Matt: Incredible experience and join our CRM program, things like that. So I think it's starting with maybe how familiar you think your audience is with your brand or your product, and you can kind of start of how far can I get them along the conversion funnel. From there, you can kind of think about, okay, what are the steps that customers typically do to interact with my business?

[00:07:03] Matt: Like, are people, everyone coming here just to buy? Are people actually coming here to read my blog? Are they coming here to get into my email program? Are they signing up for SMS? Are they looking at a couple products and leaving? So I think it's a combination of, you know, thinking about who your customer is and how leaned in they are, or how, how much they know about your business, and then taking a couple steps to get them there.

[00:07:23] Matt: And you brought up a great point is everybody thinks about this as like. You know, always a purchase driver. In reality, it's really just having a great first touch point with the business. So most often than not, a landing page is really just a way to ca capture some customer information and then retarget them and do things like that.

[00:07:38] Matt: So it's a great point in that I think a lot of people about think about conversion rate optimization. They think just about conversion. They think conversion's only purchases in reality, it's just like getting more embedded in with your business.

[00:07:48] Kelly: So beyond the purchase, , where are the things that you think about exist? Because again, it, there's, I, I think of it in these two ways, right? There's the outcome, there's the environment, and this is Todd. This is where we've debated a little bit around the actual, pieces of, of the visuals, right? Do the colors matter?

[00:08:07] Kelly: Do the fonts matter? Does the positioning matter? And what that experience, and I, and I look at that as a very kind of black and white, you know, AB testing, multi-varied testing. That's an experience. And then the other part of con conversion rate optimization I think about is more of what you just touched on, Matt, which is the journey and the environments.

[00:08:23] Kelly: And especially in a more fragmented world where sometimes the answer isn't go to my website, maybe you go to Amazon, maybe you go to Walmart, maybe you go into an app, maybe you walk into a store like. It's not always just driving to a, an asset or a destination. And so I think we can kind of maybe explore both those routes, right?

[00:08:42] Kelly: So on the actual conversion rate of the assets themselves, how much does it matter what imagery you're using? Is it lifestyle with people or is it showcasing the product? Or do colors schemes matter? Do fonts matter? Do position on the page matter. And then I, you know, after we explore that, maybe we can go more in that, that broader, more fragmented journey aspect of it.

[00:09:01] Matt: I think what I've always found from experiences from doing this for like 10 years, it's about continuity with the ad experience, meaning you have, you got someone hyped on your ad, the look and feel of it, the vibe of it. You wanna make sure that that. Matches the landing page destination that it gets to.

[00:09:16] Matt: So like, to answer your question, like does it, if, if the button on that page is blue versus purple, that that matters less in my mind than creating a continuous and you know, a connective sort of experience in between ad and site else. It's jarring and you get people to bounce. So I've actually tested this before where I had an unbelievable ad that was getting great click through and we felt great about it.

[00:09:39] Matt: And the landing page that had great stats. They had a different feel. They were shot at different times. They were put together from different design teams that did not work as well as a page that we felt less great about. That just matched the ad experience. So it's like, it's a continuity. It's like think about your you're like a customer.

[00:09:54] Matt: You're like going to a restaurant. You see the outside of this restaurant. It's super sophisticated. It's sleek, it looks premium, and then you get inside of it. It's like rinky-dink, and it's like super casual. It's jarring and like it'll make you think you're in the, if you're in the right place. And that's generally what I see customers doing is like, you wanna avoid an immediate balance on those pages.

[00:10:14] Matt: And if you have a different feel, it's you're gonna lose customers pretty quick. It's not as small as like what the buttons color that, and we can make arguments about that all day. It's more of just like, does the overall experience match between ad and and landing page?

[00:10:29] Kelly: I credit that down to. Consumer attention spans and fragmentation of attention spans, right? Like people, if they, if it's not exactly what they expect, they're, I don't see people being really willing to explore or to adapt, right? It's, did I get it or did I not? There's that instant gratification element and delivery of value.

[00:10:47] Kelly: There's an element to that, but Todd, I think you fall differently on this. I think you're a little bit more in the historical, some of those. Elements in that human psychology matters, and I think it's an interest. Has it evolved or is there still elements? I don't know that there's a right or wrong answer, but I know you have a different perspective.

[00:11:03] Todd: I just, I only have the perspective 'cause I'm the guy with the gray hair in the group. Right? So I, I grew up in a time in advertising where. Typography and fonts and colors and photography and those things all did change how people interacted with something and then as they found their, their way into, you know, websites or mobile experiences.

[00:11:25] Todd: Kelly, even back when you and I first started working together 15 plus years ago, you know that agency, we did website design and so conversion rate optimization then was change the button from blue to red. Change the button from, from click here to get more info, change the form from left side to right side.

[00:11:46] Todd: You know, that was the kind of small stuff that we tested, and most of the time those little things made a difference and they actually did make a difference on how, Matt, to your point, somebody just simply got into the CRM funnel because really all we were doing was asking for them to fill out a couple of fields in a form.

[00:12:05] Todd: And that's, believe it or not, it, we got more form fills when the form was on the top right versus the middle left. You know, just weird psychological things like that. I mean, Kelly, I don't know the psychology behind human behavior, but those things do matter. But I think modern day conversion rate optimization is, is arguably more sophisticated now because the analytics.

[00:12:31] Todd: I guess, or you know, and I, this is data, IP address, device id, all the stuff that we collect on a user now is different than what we could collect 15 or 20 years ago. And my guess is people like Matt who have had roles specifically in conversion rate optimization specialties, they're able to use more stuff than we were ever able to use historically to feed.

[00:12:56] Todd: A conversion rate, optimization practice or activity or, or things like that. But I would still say, well, let's just talk about, let's just talk about us on camera right now. You're wearing a red shirt. I'm wearing a brown shirt. Matt's wearing what looks like a bay shirt. We all bought these shirts because the color probably, or the graphic on the shirt appealed to us.

[00:13:21] Todd: Or, or whatever the styling is of the fit or whatever. So I do. Color and design matters to how humans interact with something. But I don't know if it matters as much as it used to. And I don't know how much of it is sort of maybe the next segment that I wanna go into, which is, I read a really interesting story today that came out.

[00:13:45] Todd: Kelly, I know you're a big fan of Reddit and because Reddit is supposed to be one of the last frontiers that is authentically human. And it's very much about up votes and do, it's very much curated by real people. And so people find a lot of believability and trust and authenticity in, in the Reddit platform. While it was just discovered that a bunch of academics just ran a huge AI test on Reddit, where a whole bunch of what was being said and people were interacting with on Reddit was actually ai. And now there's this massive backlash because of it, because people were fooled into, into these conversations thinking that they were human and they worked.

[00:14:32] Todd: And the scary part about it is AI is now good enough that people can't, can't detect it. And so. When I think about that versus conversion rate optimization or the ability for AI to actually psychologically influence behaviors or fool people or outcomes, like that's scary. at the same time, there's probably a lot of rapid advancement and What have you seen in terms of the evolution in probably just the last 12 months? That CRO has been impacted by AI tools?

[00:15:09] Matt: Yeah, AI is eliminating the things that the big blocks you'd have to move to get this off the ground, which is essentially like the creative and the landing page design for me, were always the hardest pieces to get going. Once you have. Have those and you have a good system there, you're able to like rapidly iterate and create different tests and sort of riff off of it.

[00:15:30] Matt: So it's, it's quickly eliminating sort of the creative needs, which for a lot of teams, creative sits outside of CRO and e-comm and things like that. So you have to get a certain amount of time from the creative teams to build the pages. And if you want to iterate, it's a whole nother thing. So it's making you quicker there.

[00:15:45] Matt: But there's also another side of it that AI's really good at, which is. Thing you wouldn't necessarily think of first is that AI now can essentially say via all the data, what is the best image? Like it's not gonna be our creative team spitting out three variant tests to say, Hey, this is like the best way to show our product.

[00:16:02] Matt: A AI tools can now tell you based off other competitors, this is the number one thing. We're actually seeing SAS businesses come out who just do that. So AI is impacting everything. I think the big thing is speed 'cause like. Back to your button conversation. And by the way, I would, I would click on Kelly's red shirt.

[00:16:17] Matt: That's definitely getting my click is a lot of it is more so, process is like everybody would wanna do this. Obviously I'd want to test everything on my site if I could and feel really confident about it. But it's all about like optimizing your time with your creative teams, optimizing your time with your development team.

[00:16:35] Matt: So if you're testing like a button or a word, you're only gonna get so much impact outta that, whereas. If you're testing the whole experience, the design of the page, big sweeping changes, the incremental lift that you can get from CRO is so much bigger, so

[00:16:48] Todd: Matt, I'm, I'm gonna pause you there, you, because you, I think what you're saying presents a problem versus what you said earlier, which is advertising the ad experience. Right. The look and feel, the, the vibe of the ad should ultimately match the destination. Right. The destination. You constantly changing the.

[00:17:12] Matt: No, not necessarily. I mean, it's like, think about it this way is like you have, you have your brand guidelines, you have like a, a picture of what your business is gonna look like, and those brand guidelines are gonna go to your creative teams to create an ad. They're gonna go to creative teams to create a landing page.

[00:17:27] Matt: What I'm sort of suggesting is like instead of getting your creative teams to change a button color or to change like a couple pieces of text. Get your team to rethink what that page is even doing, what it's motivating people to do, where it's getting people in, like just zoom out a ton. Like that's kind of like the argument that I'm suggesting.

[00:17:46] Matt: And the thing that's made that really hard is like, that would have to come with a whole nother request to your ux UI team is like, build a whole nother wireframe. Now there's AI tools that can spit those things out so quick. So it, it allows you to kind of like make big, sweeping changes even faster, I'd say, and eliminate a lot of those process requirements.

[00:18:05] Kelly: I think it allows you to keep up with what my bigger vision is, which is where we can kind of get into the debate about. Red shirt or blue button and purple button and all these things, I, I don't necessarily think that that's totally gone. I do think there's still human psychology at play.

[00:18:23] Kelly: I just feel like we've all spent so much time and been so immersed in digital environments that there's not as much novelty and uniqueness in it that draws us in that way. I think we're used to it and we're on screen where I think it plays more in. How easy and intuitive are you making things? How, how quick are people getting to value out of their experiences?

[00:18:45] Kelly: Again, there's just, there's so many options and ways in which people engage that. I think every little piece of additional friction. If I have to scroll one more time, if I have to click one more time, if I have to. Look in a place that I didn't expect it to be and hope and figure it out for myself. All of those things is what creates you know, fall down effect in terms of, of, of what's not gonna work as well.

[00:19:06] Kelly: And so I think it's less about what's the font and what's the color versus what is easiest and most intuitive and natural for the user. And that then carries me into, okay, if we're talking about. Making it easy and intuitive to the user. This is where I think what Matt said comes into play, which is not all people are created equal.

[00:19:27] Kelly: People have different motivations and expectations and experiences and tolerances, and the personalization and the evolution of where each person is at in their journey and what value proposition or what thing they need to see that's gonna connect and matter to them. Is is not the same in large swaths.

[00:19:46] Kelly: And so the ability to use AI to slice and dice and create smaller cohorts and create smaller experiences that match to tighter groupings, that's where I think you get the wins and the effects, right? So you're not driving all users to one place, you're driving two different groups of users to two different places, but.

[00:20:04] Kelly: With the same look and feel, just maybe slightly different wording or slightly different, you know, journey pieces. And then if you take that two to two and now you go to 10 to 10 or 20 to 20, that, that's impossible. If you're trying to use a, a real creative and team that that goes through it. But if, if ai, if you can create a singular blueprint and then AI lets you quickly mold that into match things with key guidelines, that's where it gets really powerful and interesting to think about.

[00:20:31] Todd: So Matt, your former roles were e-commerce in places like Amazon and, and Walmart, and even on the brand side. So what kinds of things were you guys doing or, or your most recent experiences relative to e-commerce and, optimization in those worlds? , What's a must have right now in conversion rate optimization and e-commerce strategy?

[00:20:53] Matt: Process. You need like a really good process of, of how you're using this thing, how you're shuffling in. And essentially what I would do for site experience is I would build a, everyone's got a roadmap, right? I would build a roadmap, but then I'd have a. A separate roadmap that sat behind it, which is a testing roadmap around landing page design.

[00:21:10] Matt: So for example, I knew we were gonna do a huge influencer campaign in July, and we're gonna test them through all this marketing spend at Influencer. What I wanted to do is in April and May, is test a variety of landing page designs and call to actions and different treatments around short form video within a page to prove out what our winning design would be.

[00:21:32] Matt: So then I can just basically go live with tons of insight. So. I, I'm a process guy. You guys might have brought me on the team for that very reason. But when I think about landing page design, if you're able to think about process and think about how to use it in timing, you can make sure you go to market with any updates in your homepage or your site design, like extremely confident and test it out so you're not spending time in your go-to market sequence, like testing things.

[00:21:58] Matt: You're coming to that with an informed point of view. So process and doing this without process too. That's where I see a lot of teams. Go wrong is they don't have process. They make quick, constant changes, they create more noise, and it's really hard to even see within the data when you do that. So if you have process and you got a good roadmap and you have it in a controlled timeline, it's not gonna like influence or make your your live business messy.

[00:22:20] Kelly: I have a question with process on that for you to, to think about that. So I think that in, in a vacuum, that, that makes a lot of sense, right? You all the predictability, all the advanced planning. And I think that that's a great way to go about it. How do you work in uncertainty and variability that's inevitable in certain businesses, right?

[00:22:37] Kelly: Seasonality, pr, events, competition coming in, e economic challenges, like there's a lot of things that'll drive a business up or down that can't necessarily be anticipated and can really require a lot of reactivity. You know, one, something that works in January for a business may not work in July or.

[00:22:56] Kelly: You know, there's all kinds of things that I'm thinking about where you're like, if you have a process and you pre-plan everything, how do you maintain or work into that process? Some level of adaptability to react to the market, because that's another thing that I think is evolving very rapidly, is I think things move at a much faster pace.

[00:23:11] Kelly: And they change at a faster pace. And again, with attention spans and. A lot of tumultuousness in, in the, you know, in the environments that we're in, you know, the ability for a business to, to be nimble and adaptable and reactive, I think is, can be really important. But that doesn't always align really well with process.

[00:23:29] Todd: , This is sort of along the lines of what you just talked about before, which is this need for speed, this need for simplicity, this need for just quick everything. And, and that's like the scroll thing. Like I just, everything's gotta come fast and furious.

[00:23:44] Todd: And that's just the attention span of, do you think that's just the intention span of humans now? Are you generalizing that you believe. The human race as it is evolving and, and the next generations that are coming up are so already conditioned that quality and, you know, maybe the ability to take your time to go through stuff and really explore and take in and all that.

[00:24:10] Todd: Do you think that that's like by far the minority now and what you're talking about really is. Catering to the general population, which is everything needs to be quick, fast, and easy for me to, for the general consumer to understand it, determine within seconds whether or not they need, want, or like it, and then determine from that point. To take an action and if that action isn't fulfilling within seconds, that you've potentially lost but I'm really curious. Do . You really think this is the way the human behavior is going?

[00:24:46] Kelly: so without getting too far away, so Matt can, doesn't forget the original point of the question in there.

[00:24:51] Todd: You may have to remind him.

[00:24:52] Kelly: think where my mind goes with that is very much the difference between push and pull messaging. I think if a human is already seeking something out and has made a decision that they want something and they're looking for it, I think they will have patience and they'll have the time and they will research it and they will, they will spend time through, but that's pull messaging, right?

[00:25:11] Kelly: That's, Hey, you're looking for something. I'm great. Like come, come visit mine. Push messaging is you are not thinking about what I'm selling. You're not looking for it, you're not seeking it out. I am trying to convince you, I'm trying to distract you while you're scrolling on Instagram. I'm trying to distract you while you're watching a TV show and doing this, and I'm trying to convince you to pay attention and to go do something that you otherwise had no intention of doing.

[00:25:32] Kelly: And I think the ability to con, to convince people in that capacity. Attention span and the patience that exist there is is very minuscule because there's so much shouting happening at all times and there's so much options for time and attention from people. There's so much interesting content and things to scroll and TikTok videos to watch and all these things that getting any amount of someone's time and they haven't already committed of having that desire can be quite difficult to to do.

[00:26:00] Kelly: Yeah. So going back, Matt, my, my, what I had asked you about was sort of the volatility, the, the, the disconnect between process and the adaptability of, of volatility of things like seasonality or market pressure, things like that. How to kind of marry those together to be process driven, but also be able to be reactive to unexpected things.

[00:26:19] Matt: I might be such a process person that I would literally answer. That process can save you in moments.

[00:26:25] Kelly: That's great. I mean that, that dude.

[00:26:26] Matt: It's like you think about this, like another way to think about what a testing and what landing page strategy does to you, and I, I mentioned this earlier, it's like an insight tool, right? We know through all of our tests over the last year, we know what's the ultimate landing page design to drive conversion from an influencer campaign.

[00:26:44] Matt: What's the ultimate landing page design or treatment for this pricing demonstration? What's better for men versus women with our business? Right? So when you do this and you have a process and you're building and compounding insights. When shit hits the fan, which it always will, and in this day and age, it happens all the time.

[00:27:03] Matt: That process and all those insights that you gained allows you to make a smart decision. So, and also too, it's just like, if you think about it and you know this is changing too. AI is changing this and that teams are hiring less. People within their business. Like what used to be a 20 person team for an eCom business is now like five to seven people is when you get the process and you get the flow of how to bring these things to market, you can do it much quicker too.

[00:27:27] Matt: Like you don't need to sit back and have a three month SLA for a page. You're gonna know, oh, creative's gonna need this asset first, then I'm gonna need to go to this team, then I'm gonna go to this team. Then we can go live. So like. Process also allows you to break process and, and find corners. I don't know if that's a total Switzerland answer, but like, I think my, the, the two things I will say is like, doing this and following process gives you insights to move quickly and having any simulation of a process allows you to break it and move faster too.

[00:27:53] Matt: You just know what you're doing. Otherwise, it's total chaos for a business.

[00:27:57] Kelly: I mean, I like that kind of contingency planning in an emergency, kind of have a plan, an anticipation, and being able to be forward looking of what is likely to happen. I think. Can o obviously save you a lot? I am gonna ask one kind of curve ball question on this. I'm curious as where, what your response here would be is what are your thoughts around the. I would perceive, well, I'm not even put that in there. What, what are your thoughts around the idea of, of sort of false positives in testing and experimentation? And I liken this to, you know, the covid experience, right? When things where there were certain signals that would come through that people, you know, thought would continue on, or if you hit on a certain influencer and it goes gangbusters and now you think that that's the strategy forward, but it just happened to be that one influencer versus repeatable to others like.

[00:28:46] Kelly: I that's really curious, to me, when you're thinking about how to make decisions on your business and the, the real possibility that, you know, false po positives can, can certainly come through that can lead you down the, you know, the wrong paths and, and what that would look like. I.

[00:29:00] Matt: Yeah, no, I mean, we can't paint a totally great weather report that this will solve all of your needs. And there's, that's probably the biggest wild shot I'd say, is like, I've definitely felt extremely confident with test results and thought this is the truth of the business. And then in reality realized there's some other thing happening in the market that, that drove sales up on this page.

[00:29:20] Matt: The solution to this is like two things. One. Think about traffic. Before you do anything, make sure whatever you're doing, you're putting enough. Traffic to get to stats quickly so that you're not letting these things run forever. The longer they run, the more they're prone to any sort of like differences in the market or other things happening with your competitors, things like that.

[00:29:40] Matt: So think about traffic and think about trying to do it with enough traffic so you can make decision quickly. I. The second thing is think about tools. Tools can prevent sort of the other parts of your business interacting with these tests and keeping 'em in little, little small pockets that you can really monitor.

[00:29:55] Matt: So, and those tools are getting better where they're able to actually factor in other things that are happening with your business. And spit those out too, too, probably because of ai. But yeah, start with traffic. Definitely. I was gonna mention that within process, that's like the biggest watch out is I see a lot of businesses.

[00:30:08] Matt: They get so excited. Let's do these 20 tests, and then for those 20 tests, they're gonna have just, you know, a couple hundred thousand people go into these things. Takes forever in a ramp. So be decisive. Think about traffic. If you're doing a lot of different things, use a tool. There's a lot of great ones out there based off wherever you're hosting your site.

[00:30:25] Matt: And try to keep it clean like that. Not too I mean, I think for me that that's the big thing, right? Is it's, you know, it's, it's easy to talk about these things, kind of big picture and and high level, but at the end of the day, it takes a lot of time and energy and resource and a lot of moving parts, and people have to wear a lot of hats, and you have to have a certain level of.

[00:30:45] Kelly: Interest and passion to, to see these things through and to, to kinda sort through the noise and, and apply the outcomes, right? I I, it's not something I think you can just buy off the shelf and run this test. Give me an outcome like, we've talked a lot about AI here and a lot of the conversation is, is AI can eliminate jobs.

[00:31:01] Kelly: And I, we always come back around to it. I, I just think it supplements good people doing good work because. While AI can facilitate a lot more learnings and exasperate what we can extract from it, you still need to have someone who can stitch all the pieces together and make a plan for it and do something with these really much more elevated nuggets of outcomes.

[00:31:23] Kelly: But those don't just work on their own. I think we were having a conversation earlier where we were talking about with ai, it's sort of. Like anything else, it's garbage in, garbage out, good in, good out, right? You still have to have something that prompts it and drives it and then takes something and does something with it, but the engine that you're putting stuff into and getting outcome is getting so good and so powerful, and what might've taken you six months before might take you six weeks now and now.

[00:31:49] Kelly: But that does also creates more work because the ability to do that faster means the expectations get higher and it just raises the bar. So it's, you know, everything has two sides of every coin. I.

[00:31:59] Matt: Totally. You're right. I think that's gonna be the biggest lesson over the next five years is you really do need good people doing this stuff. And that's why I'm also seeing within the market, to wrap it all up, the amount of founders that I've met recently. Who do CRO who are literally the CRO expert within the company.

[00:32:13] Matt: 'cause they know the customer, they know the brand, they know the products coming down the pipes. You gotta know everything. Or else you're gonna be asking the wrong questions and not to, you know, crap on Todd's point of view. But if you don't know all that stuff, you're probably gonna recommend a button color.

[00:32:27] Matt: I bet. I bet. So.

[00:32:30] Todd: I'm just wondering, does that mean that conversion rate optimization is merging with Chief Revenue Officer and those two are one in the same RO roles now? Well, good debate. Matt, we will have you back for more. Kelly, some of the comments you just made, and maybe Matt should join us for this topic that I'm gonna pick your brain on on the next show, is challenging the notion that it still takes good people to use the tools, because now we're entering the next chapter called AG ai.

[00:33:04] Todd: Which is supposedly, and there are agencies already building their own proprietary tools in this we'll talk about in the next show that are capable with real time live self adjustments without a person. And that's a Gentech ai and it is based on a lot of inputs. But if that is the case. Sounds scary to me.

[00:33:27] Todd: I don't know. We'll talk about it. I, there's some, there's some fresh editorial content out there and interviews and stuff that I want to go over and we will, we'll get into that in the next

[00:33:37] Kelly: Well, according, apparently, according to Reddit, you don't need real people to have engaging conversations that keep people engaged. So maybe people aren't gonna be important anymore.

[00:33:45] Todd: I, that's the, and that's my point. That's the scary thing. If, if Reddit, this community that was supposed to be pure, you know, human. Just got really rocked. It was, you know, like an 8.0 earthquake that just went through the Reddit community

[00:34:00] Kelly: Think about that you're mad because you had a conversation you clearly enjoyed enough to participate in. Like it's so weird when you think about it like, yes, you're a trick 'cause it wasn't a person. But does it matter? 'cause you personally got the same experience? 'cause you didn't know the difference.

[00:34:12] Kelly: Like, I don't know. It's interesting. I.

[00:34:14] Todd: It, it's very interesting and the, the argument is, is it's not supposed to be, even Red's executives are saying that they're investigating this because it wasn't supposed to happen. It was like a covert thing that happened as a test to test psychological behavior, and it worked. And now everybody's pissed because they got duped by ai.

[00:34:34] Todd: And, but that just opens up the much bigger door of like, if that's possible, anything's possible. And AG agentic AI is the next level of it, which means it's possible in real time on its own without human. Intervention. So we'll talk about it on the next show. Thanks, Matt. Thanks Kelly. We'll talk next week. See you.

[00:34:54] Kelly: Thanks everyone.