#691 – $20K More Sales with One Image Change

What if a simple change in your product imagery could skyrocket your sales? Join us for an insightful episode with Justin Chen, the visionary founder of PickFu, as we unpack the power of split testing in e-commerce. Gain first-hand insights from Helium 10 Audience and discover how data-driven strategies can revolutionize your approach to Amazon product presentation. Learn how to harness the power of consumer insights to refine your packaging designs and creative elements, ensuring your product stands out in a saturated market. Through engaging anecdotes and compelling case studies, we reveal how small, informed changes can lead to substantial business advantages.

We explore the intricate world of visual testing and its crucial role in optimizing product listings. From selecting dog models in pet-related items to the subtle art of tweaking packaging text, we emphasize the importance of ongoing feedback and iteration. Discover how comparing your offerings against competitors can yield valuable insights and drive enhancements in click-through and conversion rates. Whether you’re a seasoned seller or a newcomer, our discussion underscores the necessity of continuous adaptation and strategic decision-making to thrive in the ever-evolving e-commerce landscape.

Looking ahead, we will talk about the exciting future developments of PickFu and its strategic collaboration with Helium 10. Explore how PickFu is breaking new ground by expanding into global markets, offering native language feedback, and tailored testing solutions. With a commitment to high-quality data and innovative testing methodologies, PickFu is setting the stage for the next wave of e-commerce optimization. As we anticipate the new features and international capabilities, we encourage you to connect with PickFu and join us at upcoming Helium 10 gatherings for more enriching conversations and shared growth opportunities.

In episode 691 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Justin discuss:

• 00:00 – Increasing Sales With Split Testing
• 02:42 – Evolving Trends in Amazon Selling
• 10:52 – Optimizing Product Listings Through Visual Testing
• 11:29 – Dog Models Impact on Sales
• 13:30 – Optimizing Product Images for Competition
• 16:28 – Improving Listings Through Image Testing
• 20:47 – Evolving Amazon Seller Product Validation
• 21:45 – Expanding Features for Global Sellers
• 28:57 – Testing and Optimization Strategies for Listings
• 37:33 – Future Plans for PickFu and Helium 10

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

What is one service that can help sellers potentially increase sales by projected $20,000, like it did for one of my products? It’s using Helium 10 Audience, which is powered by PickFu. Today, we bring on the founder of PickFu again and he’s going to come back on the show to talk about all the different ways split testing can make you more money. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. It’s a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and we’ve got somebody who has helped tens of thousands of serious sellers worldwide, Justin from PickFu. Justin, how’s it going?

Justin:

Good. Thanks for having me on, Bradley.

Bradley Sutton:

Anybody notice who’s watching on YouTube? We are twinning. Today. We have a very stylish PickFu swag hat right here. Very nice. One of the only times you’ll catch me wearing a snapback, because what people don’t see is that my skull is so big. It’s snapbacks. They have to be on the very last rung and that’s just not swaggy at all If you’re walking around the last rung on a thing with it about to pop because your skull is so big. But anyways, here for this podcast I’m representing, Justin decided to wear the same one too. So, anyways, how’s it been going? You’re still here in California, right.

Justin:

Yeah, yeah, I’m in Los Angeles enjoying the summer weather right now.

Bradley Sutton:

It’s been a pretty mild summer, at least for us down here.

Justin:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s good, because my air conditioner broke. We got goats again and the goat chewed through the power cable that connects to the air conditioner.

Justin:

Oh my God.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s where it is. Oh yeah, I’ve been very thankful that haven’t completely needed that.

Justin:

That’s a weird problem. That’s a weird problem to have.

Bradley Sutton:

It is, and it’s not a very California problem to have. Not many people in California, or in Southern California at least, say, hey, yeah, my goat chewed through my air conditioner. But hey, that’s the story. If you want to get more of Justin’s backstory, he’s been on this show multiple times. The original one that he was on was episode 119, all the way back in 2020. All right, and then we had some follow-up episodes through the years. He came back on episode 257. You guys could look for that one 374. And yeah, 374 was the last one, back in 2022.

Bradley Sutton:

So it’s been a couple of years since you have been on, and so I’ll say, hey, we got to get Justin back on to talk about what’s new. But just in general, right off the bat I don’t know how years are all talking about the importance of like, you know click through rate optimization, about, hey, your main image, your product page. You know helping your conversion rate. You know like and using split testing tools like PickFu. But is it just me picking and choosing what I’m hearing, or are you seeing like that just more of a common theme at conferences you go to?

Justin:

Yeah, I think it’s the evolution of the industry. I think everyone’s getting much more sophisticated about improving and tracking performance. I think it helps that Amazon itself obviously they have manager experiments and so they are pushing that kind of education, and so I think everyone’s getting a lot more data-minded in terms of making decisions around which creatives they want to use.

Justin:

And I think a lot of people have seen click-through rates just you know, even from main image improvements, improving their CVRs as well. So, you know not just vanity metrics of you’re getting more sessions on the page, but people are actually buying more and as well. So, you know not just vanity metrics, as you’re getting more sessions on the page, but people are actually buying more and converting better. So I think it’s just a general sophistication increase, as everyone’s getting used to selling on Amazon. Everyone knows it’s super competitive, and so you got to stand out and the trends change. Honestly, they’re changing every month, every quarter, and you’re going to have to stay on top of your particular segment and your category and your keyword, making sure that you’re popping yep, um, you don’t want to look the same, but at the same time, you know you got to find what’s close enough to TOS compliant. That still works, uh, to stand out in the marketplace.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. All right, now just for people who are watching the first time. They’re too lazy to kind of like, go back to the other episodes. You know, I hope by now people, um, don’t. Or split testing is not a new term, or manager experiments or PickFu is a new term, but in general, what is it that that you guys do, uh, and what is it manager your experiments does? And actually you know, go ahead and end it with a comparison of the two.

Justin:

So what we are is a consumer insights platform, so we help you gather feedback on any of the product decisions you’re going to make. So it’s essentially think of it as a simple survey. We have a panel of people that we’ll reach out to. So maybe you’re testing main image or product packaging design. You have a couple of variations. You want to get feedback on it. You throw it up on a survey on a PickFu and we’re going to go out. We’re going to find your audience. So you know you, maybe it’s a woman dog owners. We’re going to incentivize them to choose which one they like and then they’re going to give a written explanation why, and so this really helps you get more confidence around the creatives that you’re going to use. And maybe you’re about to pull the trigger on new packaging, which is a huge investment, and so you want to make sure that you get it right, as opposed to launching the packaging and just completely flopping in the marketplace. So split testing with manager experiments is live split testing. So people might be familiar with this with like website A-B testing, where sometimes you’re on a website and sometimes it shows one text or a different text or a different color, whatever it is, and you’re kind of undergoing a split test experiment, and so in Amazon’s case they’ll show one main image and you can put up another one. And you know, for some other people they’ll see a different main image and then they’ll kind of track the performance of which one does better. So they’re both incredible tools that you want to use to improve your click-through rates and your conversion rates. The difference is that when you’re live testing, while you are going to get true sales data, it’s also a risk because, kind of by definition, you’re putting one up that’s not performing as well as the other one, so you’re potentially losing sales and that could be impacting broader performance. You’re going to lose money, probably negative. You could have negative consumer perception of like oh, that’s weird, like what are they doing over there now? And one of the feedback that we heard from the MYE team actually at last Accelerate was that because of this concern, a lot of people who use MYE are very conservative with what they upload, because you’re scared, right, you don’t want to take a huge risk. So they’re kind of pulling their punches and say you know, well, I’m just going to make a minor tweak and I’ll upload it and that way I’m not going to lose that much money. Well, you’re also not going to gain that. You’re not going to make a huge gain.

Justin:

So where we fit in actually is PickFu is great because it’s off platform. You know it’s not live. You can iterate as many times as you want. The feedback that people give you is private and so we fit in kind of right before you’re going to live test. So, as you’re developing creatives, you should be using PickFu to iterate on them, test against your competition. Make sure that when you go live you’re very confident that this whole new direction maybe you used to do a black motif and you want to go pink, like you’re not going to shock everyone. It actually feels on brand. But now you can take those kinds of drastic changes because you validated them. You’ve heard the feedback from potential consumers and what we actually have seen and when we talked to the MYE product team also is that the significance comes back much faster. So, you know typically MYE may take weeks. You know eight to 10 weeks or whatever. We have a lot of customers that their MYE experiments finish one to two weeks just because like it’s so much better, it’s and it’s validated. So you know, like they’re, they’re confident that it’s going to work.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. yeah, I, you know, I think I’ve used a manager experiments, but like with a very specific use case where I just wanted to kind of like, kind of see some of my, you know, impression numbers and also like if I have a shady main image like something that’s a gray area. It’s like that’s my way of numbers. And also, like, if I have a shady main image, like something that’s a gray area, it’s like that’s my way of getting it in because, like, if it’s the winning one and Amazon puts it in, it’s not me uploading an image, it’s Amazon like usually there will be a message like, if it’s absolutely no, this image is not allowed, yeah, you would find out and manage your experiments, as opposed to, like, getting your image, you know, suppressed or your main listing suppressed. But, yeah, you’re right, like I, to me it makes no sense to do it as your only split testing for, like some of your main creatives, especially because the listing, by definition, is live already. So, by definition, you’re saying that, hey, for 15 out of 30 days you have something that is not optimized for your audience. That’s right. I much rather have it done before, where I start from day zero on my listing of what is a hundred percent optimized, you know, and so it’s just a, it’s just a no brainer to me.

Bradley Sutton:

Sure, Manage Your Experiments is free. But, yeah, like free, I save a hundred bucks or 50 bucks or something like that, but for half the month, my like that, but for half the month my click-through rate is bad. You’re like you’re wasting a lot, lot more money, um on that. But um, let’s, let’s talk you know about. Go back to the use cases. For somebody brand new, I think, I think most experienced people, or even somebody brand new, the no-brainer thing to split test is main image. So let’s just start there, even for people who know about it, what kind of main image split test are you seeing making big impacts. Like is it just about things? All right, I know it’s not, but we’re not talking about things like just the angle of the camera on the image, but it’s also like things like you know, perhaps text on the package and talk about some of the experiences, maybe of stuff that have really worked for for sellers out there.

Justin:

Yeah, yeah. So, like you said, there there’s a lot of different tactics and the tricky thing, you know, whenever people ask this question, is that it there’s a huge list of things to experiment on, but they’re different for every product in every category. So what may work for, let’s say, supplements may not necessarily work for, you know, baby clothes or dog harnesses or whatever it is. So, there are a lot of tactics, including, yeah, changing the angle, and I’ve seen one test where literally they just flipped it, you know, and one you know it’s kind of like left or right and like it was a huge difference, just because, like the perceived I don’t know, like the perception of it was very different.

Justin:

Obviously, there’s a little enhancement that you can do, like you said, putting text on packaging, even just showing the packaging. I think that’s the most obvious one that a lot of people, if they’re not doing it, should probably do is just show your packaging, especially if you’ve spent time on it, like if you’ve got nice packaging, throw it in there. It’s part of the thing. And if you don’t, then you could still put a package and put some text on it and you know that usually passes anyway. So you know those, those are common things, um, ingredients are really common. So if your supplements or flavors, all that kind of stuff showing the fruits and things like that, the badges, um, you know if there’s certifications, or you in the US, like, obviously you show those kinds of things, kind of super imposing them on the package or the product itself.

Justin:

Other things that you don’t think are going to make a big difference are the dogs. Let’s say you’re you know pets, right, like a lot of times you could show the dog you know. People surprisingly don’t test the dog. Makes a huge difference what dog. It is right, because maybe it gives a relative size or some dogs are just more appealing than others. A lot of times we see the seller just using whatever like their dog which I get, yeah, your dog is cute, but maybe not the best performing one, and so we’ll see savvy sellers test all these different dog models and it makes a big difference. So these kinds of things where maybe you have a preference or you just think like, oh well, everyone loves the lab or something like that, well, you might as well test it, right because like for every product, it might be different and you know if it’s something about like hair, you know, shampooing or something. Yeah, maybe the lab with like the type of fur may do well, but if you’re putting the wrong kind of dog and that doesn’t even make sense, then it’s not going to perform well. So there’s all these like micro.

Justin:

I think the key is that there’s all these micro decisions and assumptions that we’re always making and now you can validate them at you know, little to no cost and very quickly. I mean these. I don’t know if we mentioned it, but typically they’re done 15, 30 minutes, you know under an hour usually, and so you know under an hour usually. And so, you know you’re not sitting around waiting for you know weeks for this kind of test to come back so you can launch it. Go have your coffee, come back, talk about it with your team. Hey, people don’t like this dog, they don’t like this font. Let’s try another test and keep iterating.

Justin:

The last thing I’ll mention is that you definitely want to test variations, but then the most important thing is actually then testing of that against your competition. So people usually get caught up because they keep iterating on their own variations and then they come to kind of like a local maxim of like all right, this is the best new version that I have, but if you don’t test it against your competition, you might not have made any improvements, right, it just looks better. Better relative to what it was before. It doesn’t mean it’s better against your competition. You might not have made any improvements, right, it just looks better relative to what it was before. It doesn’t mean it’s better against your competition.

Bradley Sutton:

Very good point.

Justin:

Yeah. So the process that we typically recommend is you baseline your main image or whatever it is that you’re doing against your competition and maybe you’re going to lose. Maybe you win 10% of the vote. Then go do your iterations, keep improving it, then retest against that same competition and hopefully you’re going to see a relative improvement. You may not win right, because there’s maybe there’s some crazy brand that’s just awesome and they have brand share, whatever, whatever. But if you’re showing a relative improvement, that’s going to translate into an increase in clicks.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, so maybe it’s like almost um at least four step process, like like you, you test what you you know you’re if you’re an existing seller.

If you’re new three, uh, at least, but, but it’s like. Or if you’re an existing seller, hey, test your main image against the competitor. Does the competitor win? Yes, well, maybe that’s part of the reason why the competitor is beating you all. Right, so now you have three, four different options. Uh, you know for yours and you see which is the winner. And then you maybe do it again one more time in case you need to narrow it down more. And then the final thing is whatever was the winner from those two, now put it back up against your competitor and now, does it win? And if so, you’re good to go. So that’s a good point. And then, if you’re a brand new seller, it’s kind of like all right, go through your first couple iterations of what’s the best thing that you can come up with, and then you know, like, mock it on Amazon, you know search result page or something you know, screenshot, and then and then and then compare it to the competitor and see if people would click your. So that’s a very good point. I didn’t even realize.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you browsing a Shopify, Walmart, Etsy, Alibaba or Pinterest page and maybe you see a cool product that you want to get some more data on. Well, while you’re on those pages, you can actually use the Helium 10 Chrome Extension Demand Analyzer to get instant data about what’s happening on Amazon for those keywords on these other websites. Or maybe you want to then follow up and get an actual supplier quote from a company on Alibaba.com in order to see if you can get this product produced. You can do that also with the Helium 10 Demand Analyzer. Both of these are part of the Helium 10 Chrome Extension, which you can download for free at h10.me/extension.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, stepping two steps back, I want to like inspire people about why this conversation is even important, and so I had a, you know, and I want to get a couple anecdotes from you. I had a recent thing, I think I posted on LinkedIn um a couple, uh, a few weeks ago, where there was a, a re I don’t want to say rebranding, but like a refresh of a listing. We did, I did, in conjunction with AMZ, one step for a customer who has a hemp cream product, and they had the same main image for years and they did a new. They did a new photo shoot for it, and then so I did about two, two I only had two Helium 10 audience which, for those who don’t know, Helium 10 PickFu is in Helium 10. It’s called Helium 10 audience.

But I did two tests. The first one was all right, let me, um, take some variations from this. You know they took a few different variations, AMZ one step and let me pick which one wins there. And then I also made sure is it better than my? My last one, and there was one thing that was interesting, like, like it wasn’t just a matter of which one was winning, but looking at the notes about why, about why it won, because I was like, oh shoot, like I didn’t even realize that, like somebody says, oh, I like it with the cap off, because I couldn’t see how the applicator, you know, looked like I was like, didn’t even think about that, I was taking the cap off just for another, another reason, you know, and. So that we iterated on that and then we actually I had to there was something that they liked about the original photo that none of the new ones had. So I actually took an aspect of component of the original one and put it to the new, one of the best ones that they like, and I was like all right, this is what I’m going to go with and then with these new images that we have now.

Bradley Sutton:

Obviously, it’s not just about the main image and we did new, a plus content and stuff, but just to show you guys the, you know, the big advantage. I think it was like a, something like a three or 4%, at least a 3% conversion rate or or I forgot it was conversion rate or click through rate, but whatever it was, I calculated it out because this is not something that sells like one or two units a day. It sells, like you know, 10, 20, 30 units a day. It was like basically $20,000 difference for the year, without changing the listing, other than you know the images and all this stuff and so it.

Bradley Sutton:

You know that might be an extreme example, but it’s a personal example. I literally did that and could see the numbers after one month about how you could see the metrics change. Like the session stayed similar on one of them, but then you know, because I split test the other images it was converting better and you know we’re talking the same amount of sessions. I think it was like 470 units in a one-month span sold before, and then the new one is like 560 with the same exact number of sessions. So these are things that real sellers are experiencing by not just throwing up what they think. Can you give some? You know you can mention names or you don’t have to mention names, but of some specific examples where customers came back to you and said oh my God, like I thought I had the best image. But I went from this to this and this is what happened.

Justin:

Yeah, I mean, like you said a lot of times it’s the simplest situations where, um, we were, uh, yes bar, we have, we have this one on our website from a couple of years ago but yes bar wanted to do a, um, a main image test, and they, um, they agreed not to change anything else on the listing, and so they, they only ran a single poll, I think it was 85 bucks. Um, they found a better main image, just swap that. And within two weeks, uh, the traffic had increased 12% and, like nothing else, you know nothing else changed. And you know, in retrospect, you look at these. It’s funny cause, in retrospect, you, you look at these and you’re like, oh, of course, that one is better. Now you read all the explanations. But, yeah, you wouldn’t necessarily have the confidence to do that without seeing what people say. And I think you hit the head on the nail where it’s the explanations that really matter, right.

Justin:

So, people, what we like to say, people come for the quantitative right because they just want to know what wins, but really, they stay for that qualitative, because that’s where the real nuggets are, and kind of like what you said, it’s a very iterative process. It’s not. You know, of course people would love it if it was one and done but really, it’s an iterative process of reading through the feedback. Iterative process of reading through the feedback, trying it again and keep improving on it. So really, just think about this like the scientific method and just one tool you know in your toolbox to improve things. And so, what we would rather you do is kind of make these micro validations throughout your entire product process right, because we’ve been talking about the main image, but a lot of times decisions have been made about branding or the packaging.

Justin:

And you know what? What really pains me is when, when someone comes to us cause they want to improve their main image, and the feedback is all about well, your, your brand name is terrible, your logo is terrible, your packaging is terrible, I don’t even like your product. And so it’s like well, okay, okay, well sunk costs. Maybe we should have got feedback on this like way earlier. And so the typical pattern is, you know, newer sellers will come because they already have, they already have this thesis for their first product. They’re like no, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going all in on. It doesn’t sell.

Then they try to fix the main image. Um, then the next time around, after they’ve kind of like, learned their ways, okay, like, maybe I’m going to start doing some more validation earlier in the process. And you know not call it the silly brand name that I just came up with that I love and actually get feedback on all these different aspects, because the main image still is a combination of all these decisions you’ve made for months, right, like when you were sketching the product out and designing the packaging and all this kind of stuff, and so really, you can only change so much of it, right? It’s still the core thing that you’re selling is needs to test well.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely All right, cool. We’ll talk in a couple of seconds about different use cases. We just talked about main image, mainly for now, for now. But another question people might have might now, uh, nowadays, just like you know, you know Helium 10 wasn’t the first, but we were. We were one of the first tools, yeah, out there. But then, like you know, after a while, like every mom and pop was, was making a, you know, tool for amazon sellers. It seemed back in the day.

Justin:

Sure.

Bradley Sutton:

And so, people ask me, hey, well, like why should I use helium, why should I use Helium 10? Well, it’s like pretty clear, you know, answer, like from the tools that we have in the functions, like there’s no comparison. Like you’re literally losing money if you use anything else out there, because you don’t have everything that that we have and the quality of the data is not as good. Thing has happened, like in the split testing, you know, for years, like it was only PickFu, like it almost became a verb like hey, I’m gonna use, uh, some Tupperware here. Well, I’m just, I need to pick through this thing. It became like a, like a terminology that that nobody else, you know, didn’t apply to any other company because you were the only ones out there and now there’s a lot of you know or not a lot, but you know a number of different split testing companies. Why should somebody still use PickFu? What’s the advantage that you guys have other than being first to market?

Justin:

Yeah, that’s a great question and, honestly, we’re glad that you know there’s more attention being spent on testing in general. Right, I think people always ask me how do I get started testing? And first it’s just having the mindset that you’re willing to test, because you know, as you’ve probably experienced, like you kind of have to have some psychological safety and confidence to be open to this kind of feedback, because it can be brutal. It can be brutal to see people kind of tear down your product. There’s something that you love and you know be very brutally honest with you. But yeah, so to answer your question, we focus, like Helium 10 does incredibly, on the software and making sure that it’s a really high-quality product.

Justin:

And so, for us, I think the one of the key things that’s really important for a platform like this is the data, and we spend a lot of effort on the data quality. So we have an entire team of people that’s responsible for, you know, sourcing our respondents, making sure the data is high quality. We discard probably half the responses that come through just because we can tell that they’re not paying attention, they’re writing gibberish or whatever. There’s all these different factors that we’re monitoring and we have a multi-step filtration. You know, kind of like triple distilled vodka or something, and we have a multi-stage filtration to make sure that by the time if you order 50 women dog owners, we’re going to get you 50 high quality women dog owner responses and, uh, you know, if there’s ever a bad one in there, you could flag it and you could discard it. We’re going to get you a new one. So we really do spend a lot of time on quality. The other aspect is that, um, we want to help people test that in the way that they want to test, and I think what’s been interesting, as we’ve talked about the evolution of this industry and people getting more sophisticated is that you know the way that you run your business is very different than how someone else wants to run their business and they may have different testing methodologies that they want, and I think some of the other folks may have very prescribed approaches to how to test. We try to provide the raw tools that allow you to test in the way that you want to test for your entire team.

Justin:

So we’ll have a lot of large teams come on and they’ll create custom templates, and we have this ability to make custom templates so that as you spread within your brand team maybe you’ve got a dozen people in there you want to make sure that you’re all testing in the same way, so we’re all using the same question and the same methodology, and so we really try to empower these growing brands because you know, the last thing you want is people, you know asking the wrong question or like getting the targeting wrong and just running out the bill and all this kind of stuff.

Justin:

So we do really put a lot of effort into making sure that our tool is tailored towards your organization. So we support a lot of larger organizations. We’re SOC 2 compliant, we take security incredibly seriously, we can handle enterprise procurement, all that kind of stuff. So we’re definitely trying to grow with the sophistication of all the sellers in the space and now a lot of the largest brands that weren’t even native amazon before but are doing a lot of volume on Amazon do use PickFu to test not only their amazon assets but across all different marketplaces in all different countries. I think we’re up to 13 different countries now and constantly adding more countries. So, yeah, we really try to work with, you know, global, global brands that are trying to test everywhere and the way that they want to test.

Bradley Sutton:

I like it. I like it. That’s kind of big. For the longest time, PickFu is only for Amazon USA, so the fact that you’re in multiple countries and can get target markets in those countries. Now in some of the countries then are those people giving feedback in their native language? That’s right. Like in Amazon Spain, it would be Spanish or something like that. Okay, yeah cool.

Justin:

So we have like a completely different experience. That’s all translated for them. Uh, we auto translate the question and the responses back into whatever language that your target language is, and so, uh, but you could always see the originals if you want to. You know, have your Spanish-speaking friend come read them, and if you don’t speak Spanish, um, or if you want to write the question in Spanish yourself, you can do that or we can auto translate it for you.

Bradley Sutton:

I like it. I like it. Um, all right. Now what other new features, other than, you know, international marketplaces, uh has happened in the last couple of years, since the last time you’ve been on the podcast for a PickFu?

Justin:

Yeah, so um, um, we do have a mock-up tool that kind of lets you uh create um mock-ups. So you know, we saw a lot of people doing this uh manually with just like Photoshop and that kind of stuff, but you know, being able to make it look like the, the search results. So you know, put the image, the title, the ratings, that kind of stuff. We could also put that inside of a search result kind of frame. So you know it looks like you’re on Amazon and you know which one would you buy, and so you could, you know, mock it up like that. We support image sets now so you could we’ll even show it kind of similar with the thumbnails right. Like along either vertically or horizontal, small thumbnails, and then when you hover over it it’ll show the image just like Amazon. So you could either upload all those images or you could put an ASIN in and pull them down.

Justin:

So the way that we see people testing this is they will test a different image set. So a lot of times they have a design team and they’ll create, you know, different themes or different types of secondary images. They want to see which sets of images perform better and then they’ll test against your competition cause, like I said, like you still have to beat the competition and people are evaluating image sets against each competition because like I said, you still have to beat the competition and people are evaluating image sets against each other. So that’s kind of how that’s being used and that just really helps you with the conversion rate. As we’re talking about, it’s not just about getting the clicks onto the page, it is also about improving the messaging when you’re on the actual listing, and so that’s an important test that we’re seeing a lot more of our sophisticated brands doing.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, we’ve talked about main image. We’ve talked, you know, potential branding, you know brand name and other things. What are I mean by the numbers? What’s the after the main image? What’s like number two, three, four and five as far as what people can or are or should be using Helium 10 Audience or PickFu for what kind of questions or what kind of results?

Justin:

So kind of going back to CVR, a popular test is actually open-ended feedback on a listing. So if you are live, you could just put up your, your, your listing, and you ask you know, take a look at, say, you’re buying a dog, harness, take a look at this listing, what questions you still have about it. And so people will go check out the listing. They’ll, you know, look at the images, read through the content, the A plus content, whatever it is, and they’ll surface questions that maybe you thought you already answered, but maybe just not well enough or clear enough. And so I think this is a great way to figure out what might be the issue with your conversion rate, because it’s really interesting. People will say like, oh, you know, is it washable? Like I thought I emphasized that it was washable, there’s a bullet right here. Well, maybe you need an image that talks about how it’s washable, maybe you need it to put it in your A plus content, all this kind of stuff, and so it’s a really nice way to kind of audit where you are in terms of your listing. And then, similarly, you can do that same thing, an open-ended test, with some of your images. So you know, they’ll do a test where they’ll take one of your secondary, take one, take one secondary image and just say what do you think about this image? What do you think the message is that we’re trying to convey? And that’s really important, because typically every one of those messages you have something that you’re trying to communicate, whether it’s the product in use or how durable it is, or trust or whatever it is, and if they’re not taking that away, then your image is kind of failing right. So those are really good tests. And then we actually see a lot of open-ended behavioral, psychological questions.

Justin:

So let’s say, when you’re buying a new dog food, who do you turn to for advice? Who do you follow to see what you know? New products are trending like, kind of like trying to get into the headspace of your target avatar, and you know this is more typical focus groupie kind of questions. And now that we’re making it easy for folks to do this, I think it kind of they start thinking about like, oh well, you know why, stop at just optimizing these creative assets like I want to.

Justin:

I want to. You know why. Stop at just optimizing these creative assets like I want to get to know who my target avatar is right, like why do you even consider buying a new dog food? Like did something go wrong with your existing dog food? Like, how big of a package would you want you know, like all these questions that you could inform your product strategy? Or like how you go to market, uh maybe what social channels they’re, uh you know learning about things, or which influencers you might be able to tap into for marketing. So, yeah, those are some of the uh more interesting ones that are aren’t just, you know, creative testing, uh head-to-head.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, excellent, excellent, um, what is something that’s off the wall, like almost nobody’s using, but then you’ve heard of, like, one of your customers using. They’re like, wow, you know, I actually did it for this. You’re like, oh man, I never thought that somebody would do that, but they actually got some results out of it. Can you think of anything?

Justin:

I don’t know. I feel like, at this point.

Bradley Sutton:

You’ve seen it all

Justin:

I’ve seen it all, seen it all across all the different product types, all kinds of different product types.

Bradley Sutton:

Pricing people.

Justin:

Pricing is a good one. That’s actually one of my favorite ones. Yeah, we should have talked about that, because there’s a lot of things you could test with bundles. Say, you’re selling a Tupperware and it’s like, oh, should it be one, should it be three, should it be three, should it have a bunch of different ones, different sizes, all that kind of stuff. So bundling and pricing is an incredibly great test and with the mock-ups you can adjust the pricing and you could adjust like stars and the ratings and all that kind of stuff to see the impact that that has on pricing. And so what’s really fun about that is if, say, you’re new and you’re going into a market that’s highly competitive and so you know everyone’s got, you know, 10,000 reviews. Well, if you’re coming in with like 50 reviews, what price do you need to come in? At that you can kind of start chipping it away, and so you can just keep adjusting that and keep testing it.

Justin:

And it’s really interesting to see the explanations, because people say like, well, normally I would only buy anything that’s got over a thousand reviews, but for this kind of products I might take a flyer, since it’s like $10 cheaper, it’s worth the gamble. It’s like, oh, okay, well, we’re hitting some psychological threshold. And how would you have known that otherwise? Right, like sure you could test it live, but you’re not going to get those explanations. And the other thing is, maybe you can’t even support the business selling at that price, like the worst case is that you eventually figure out that is what the price.

Justin:

But now, now the maybe the business economics don’t even work. Well, it’s like, well, I wish I had known that ahead of time, because I wouldn’t have come into this business knowing it had to sell like $10 cheaper than everyone else, right? So we see a lot of people avoid disaster actually through this hypothetical testing, because a lot of people, even existing brands, they kind of dip their toes in to a new product segment by doing hypothetical testing. So you know, a lot of times they’re testing like a fake product that doesn’t even exist, like they’ll make it maybe you know, 3D render, make the main image, come up with the title. Like they’ll go through the whole process, test it against your competition and then make an adjustment, make a judgment of all right, well, do we want to go into the space, like are we competitive or not, or should we spend our effort and our money somewhere else. And you know, that’s not just for new people, that’s for existing brands looking to do like product and brand extension.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting, interesting, I like it, yeah. So, guys, this is important. You know, one way you can know how important it is everything almost in Helium 10. It’s just made by Helium 10. There’s only one tool in the whole entire Helium 10. That’s not technically Helium 10 and that’s Audience, which is PickFu, like it’s so good. We’re like, hey, we need to. We’re not going to make this on our own, we’re going to leverage. Who’s the number one out there in the game? Uh, pig food. And we’ve been pushing PickFu since before it was inside of Helium 10. So that should just show you how important this is.

Bradley Sutton:

Like if you’re a wholesale seller or arbitrage seller, you don’t even control your listings. Do you need pick food Helium 10 ounce? Probably not, probably. I would say absolutely not, unless maybe something wild for pricing or something like that. But if you have your own brand, your private label seller, you’re a big brand. You can control your listing. You like literally 100 of you should be using this. You know you can’t say that about all tools. You know some tools are like oh man, only if you’re a big seller, um, you do this. Or only if you’re a beginner, or only if you’re this type of seller. No, if you’ve got a brand, there should never be a launch that you do or a product that you’ve had for years that you have not run a PickFu or Helium 10 audience on because it is so important, especially now.

Bradley Sutton:

How many people are just complaining out there, guys, of, oh my goodness, profitability is so hard and it’s so down and there’s so many new fees on Amazon. Well, how can you contest those fees? Well, you can offset those fees by making sure you’re fully optimized and you have a good click-through rate, a good conversion rate. So important guys. So every single person out there who has never used PickFu Helium 10 audience, you have got to start today, because you are literally leaving money on the table. Sometimes, like in the case I talked about at the beginning with the hemp cream account, you might be leaving $20,000 on the table and it’s only going to cost you $70, $100, $200, depending on how many times you use it, and then you’ll be good for it. You’ll be good for a while. So I highly recommend everybody to go ahead and use those tools. Any like 30 or 60 second strategy you can share with the audience as a little parting gift for them.

Justin:

Yeah, I mean, if you don’t know where to start, I would do one of those audits, assuming you have a listing that’s live. I would take your listing, I would throw it into Helium 10 audience or PickFu and just get people to give you feedback on that listing, because chances are there’s something that can be improved, whether it’s your imagery or your description, a plus content, something like that that could be addressed. I think that’s incredibly important. And then, if you want to go one step further, test your main image against your top three competitors. Don’t even have to make variations. Just go, get an understanding of why people may be choosing your competitors, and I think that’ll be it.

Bradley Sutton:

What’s the question that you’d use in that situation?

Justin:

I would just say, like you know, when you’re shopping on Amazon, for you know keyword, category, whatever it is, which one would you, which product would you buy?

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, good, that’s very similar to what I’m doing, so.

Justin:

I guess I’m doing the right one. Keep it as neutral, but a little bit of context, right?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, okay, perfect, all right, Justin. Thank you so much for joining us, looking forward to what PickFu is going to be bringing in the future. Guys, go to PickFu.com or you can reach out. I think they might be in our Helium 10 hub, hubhelium10.com. And, like I said, Helium 10 audience should be our first bet. But some of the new features we don’t have yet, like the international, I don’t think we have in Helium 10 audience yet. So if you need that, you can go directly to PickFu. But thank you for coming on here. And we look forward to seeing you at some events and maybe some Helium 10 parties in the near future.

Justin:

For sure, thank you, Bradley.

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